Hill 'Imperils' 2010 Census

As if the Census Bureau didn't have enough risks to manage for the upcoming 2010 decennial census, now the bureau has to worry about not being able to conduct its dress rehearsal. In a New York Times editorial yesterday, the paper laid out the consequences of a stop-gap bill to fund the operations of the federal government through November. That means no funding for the Census Bureau's decennial dress rehearsals, which are critical for testing business processes and, most important, new handheld computers it plans to use to help count the population. Already, the handhelds present numerous risks to the bureau, according to a Government Executive magazine article published this summer, and not being able to test them only exacerbates the problem.

So much so, that the stop-gap funding measure "would virtually guarantee a flawed census," the Times concludes. "Especially imperiled by a funding delay is a contract for the hand-held computers that the bureau intends to use for the first time in 2010," the Times points out.