Hill, auditors grill officials about new census plan

Senators and government auditors strongly questioned Census Bureau officials on Tuesday about their plans to improve management of information technology projects for the 2010 census by bringing in an additional manager to help oversee planning and to improve communications.

Comment on this article in The Forum.Census Bureau Director Steve Murdock told the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs that the bureau had elevated Arnold Jackson to associate director for the decennial census, one of several moves that it believed would help rectify some of the management problems it has faced in preparing for the 2010 count.

Murdock said Jackson is "a seasoned census manager with extensive experience directing information technology projects," and added that he holds daily assessment meetings with bureau managers and contractor Harris Corp. and weekly status meetings with deputy director, Jay Waite. Murdock also meets with Commerce Department officials.

"We recognize we simply have to do things right," he told the panel. "This isn't a few-month process. To lose anymore time is to threaten the census itself."

Jackson's promotion comes in the wake of the bureau's announcement on April 3 that it planned not to use handheld devices during the 2010 census to help count Americans who do not send in their forms. Census said it would return to its traditional process of using paper forms and pencils for the follow-up count.

The bureau awarded the contract to develop more than 525,000 handheld computers to Harris in 2006 for $595 million. Since then, auditors, including the Government Accountability Office, had heavily criticized the bureau for not properly managing the contract, the cost of which has ballooned to $1.3 billion, and not fully testing handhelds before the follow up count, scheduled to take place in April 2010.

Murdock also said the bureau's IT office was understaffed, which could have contributed to problems that led to the contract's failure. "We have good people in the IT area, but a very small number," he said. "We recognize that we are very short of people in IT."

But David Powner, director of information technology issues at GAO who has written numerous reports on the handheld contract, called the recent management changes a "shuffling of chairs at Census." He encouraged the bureau to consider hiring an executive who has a proven track record in rescuing troubled IT projects.

Murdock also said that improving communication with GAO was one of his top priorities as director. "For whatever reason, we didn't listen sufficiently before, but we are dedicated to listening now," he said.

In response to Murdock's statement, Powner said poor communication between the bureau and GAO was an understatement and the program's failures also were caused by poor program management and poor executive level oversight.

Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez said while the bureau would not use the handhelds as much as initially conceived, the contract with Harris had increased significantly in scope and cost because the contractor would have to perform additional work to prepare for the paper-based census. That included providing the architecture and equipment for paper-based operations and outfitting and linking all local Census Bureau offices to a nationwide network.

On April 3, Gutierrez testified that the cost for the 2010 census would increase between $2.2 billion and $3 billion, for a total cost of$14.5 billion. (The original cost estimate for the census was about $11 billion.) The revised estimate included $160 million to $230 million more for fiscal 2008. The bureau would need an additional $600 million to $700 million for fiscal 2009.

Powner expressed skepticism about the cost estimates, and said the bureau could not verify the estimates given the uncertainty of reverting to paper this late in the planning process for the decennial census. He recommended that the Harris contract, now renegotiated to include the additional work, be thoroughly examined for potential savings.

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Sens. Thomas Carper, D-Del., and Tom Coburn, R-Okla., also grilled Gutierrez and Murdock about testimony the bureau provided in previous hearings. Coburn questioned why Census officials hadn't taken more seriously the repeated warnings from GAO and the federal consulting firm Mitre Corp. about the problems with the handheld program. "I have heartburn over the previous census director," Coburn said, referring to C. Louis Kincannon, whom Murdock replaced in January. "Incompetence comes to mind. His answers were unsteady and untrue."

He added that "Americans should be outraged" that the original $595 million contract with Harris grew to $1.3 billion despite the devices having only "half the functionality" as planned. Coburn also held up photos of the handheld Harris developed and an Apple iPhone, with the respective price for each device underneath the image."A $400 iPhone can do twice as much as a $600 handheld," Coburn said.

"The folks that were on this felt confident in what was being talked about," Gutierrez said in response to Coburn. "It was a sense of false confidence that things will work out without a plan. This is a great management lesson: Problems tend to happen a lot easier, especially with something as complex as this program."

Gutierrez said if he would fault Harris at all, it would be "if they saw things not moving forward or decisions not being made, they should have knocked my door down. This was too important to be diplomatic."

A spokesman for Harris responded in an e-mail statement: "We are encouraged by the proactive leadership of the new census Director Dr. Steve Murdock and his decision to take the concerns regarding the program to the highest levels of the Commerce Department. We have the utmost confidence in the leadership of both Dr. Murdock and Secretary Gutierrez and remain totally committed to assisting the bureau in obtaining a successful 2010 decennial count."