GAO: More work needed to ensure Census handheld computers work

The Census Bureau must improve its management of a contract to develop handheld computers to ensure that workers can use the devices next year to check the accuracy of addresses and add new ones before the 2010 decennial census, according to a report released on Tuesday by the Government Accountability Office.

Comment on this article in The Forum.Census had not fixed problems uncovered during field tests in 2007, including failure to establish benchmarks for how the handhelds should perform and to determine how it would complete the so-called address canvassing within the time frame the agency had established, according to the report.

Problems with the handhelds date back to March 2006, when Census awarded a $595 million contract to Harris Corp. to develop more than 500,000 handheld computers that temporary workers would use to collect information from households that didn't return census forms that were mailed to them. The flaws were evident in 2007, when the agency ran tests using the devices to update the agency's database of addresses. More problems occurred when Census asked Harris to add additional functionalities to the handhelds.

In April, Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez announced the Census Bureau would scale back its plans for the handhelds, saying it would use the devices only to update addresses. The bureau would revert to using paper forms to collect census data from households.

The agency plans to use 150,000 handhelds equipped with Global Positioning System technology to verify addresses, called address canvassing. The exercise will begin in 2009, so it is critical that Census increase its oversight of the contract to ensure that the devices will be ready, according to GAO.

"The decision to use the handheld computers in the 2010 address canvassing operation makes it critical that any problems identified with the handheld computers in the dress rehearsal are resolved quickly and that the bureau understands the implications of proceeding with this technology," the report noted.

During the dress rehearsal, census field workers experienced data transmission delays, handhelds freezing up, and problems with collecting map coordinates and inputting data on housing units in large buildings. In addition, the help desk facilities set up for the exercise were insufficient, GAO reported.

Census acknowledged that the technology issues decreased the staff's productivity. In addition, the contract with Harris included a dashboard application to monitor the performance of the handhelds in real-time, but the agency used no such application during the dress rehearsal tests.

Harris Corp. responded to the GAO report in an e-mail: "The dress rehearsal was conducted well more than a year ago (May to June of 2007) when the address canvassing technology was put through its first field tests to gather data in order to identify performance refinement opportunities. In the 16 months since the dress rehearsal . . . we've significantly advanced each performance measure evaluated. It's also important to note that [the] vast majority of the field workers taking part in the dress rehearsal were able to effectively use the handheld devices and enjoyed a device success rate of 99.5 percent."

GAO also said Census failed to analyze the range of transmission times or develop acceptable performance measures that would help it evaluate the handhelds. As a result, the report said, the agency's testing plan for address canvassing released in June does not specify when or how it will determine the handhelds are ready for use.

The report recommended that Census create guidelines for the handhelds that will determine when they are ready for use and also specify when and how that determination will take place. In addition, the report called for the agency to specify how it will manage processing for city blocks that have large numbers of housing units and how it will test that approach. GAO wants Census to develop an application to monitor performance of the handhelds during field testing later this year and early next year.

The Commerce Department generally concurred with the GAO's findings.