Reps Want Another Census Hearing

Reps. Tom Davis, R-Va., and Mike Turner, R-Ohio, have asked the Democratic leadership on the House government oversight committee to schedule a hearing to investigate the Census Bureau's management of a project to develop handheld computers it plans to use for the 2010 census.

In a Jan. 7 letter, Davis and Turner cite a Government Executive article published Jan. 2 that was based on a Mitre Corp. document characterizing the handheld computer contract as in "serious trouble" because of poor management. The representatives have asked Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and Rep. William Lacy Clay, D-Mo., chairman of the Information Policy, the Census and National Archives Subcommittee, to schedule a hearing on the subject.

In particular, Davis and Turner want to know why Census Bureau Director C. Louis Kincannon did not mention during a subcommittee hearing held Dec. 11 the meeting that Census managers had with Mitre to discuss the contract's problems. The meeting with Mitre, in which Mitre delivered an unusually harsh analysis of how Census was managing the handheld contract, as outlined in Mitre’s talking points document, was held Nov. 29, 12 days before the hearing.

The Census Bureau's senior leadership has maintained â€" rather stridently at times â€" that the handhelds will work as planned for the 2010 census and that the only problems they have experienced are those consistent with any IT project of this magnitude. They have insisted they do not need to develop a backup plan in case the handhelds do not work. Forming a backup plan to use paper would be too costly, they argue. But the Government Accountability Office (and now Mitre), as well as project management experts, have all strongly questioned the Census Bureau's management of the contract, especially the inability to manage the inherent risks, as outlined in a Government Executive article last summer.

If the handhelds did not work as planned and the Census Bureau had to revert to using paper forms to collect census data, the cost of the 2010 census would increase by the billions of dollars. Already the cost of the census is tracking to be more than double the $6.5 billion cost of the 2000 census. Nevertheless, Congress would spend whatever it had to to conduct the census, because, as one Hill staffer reminds us, the census is a Constitutional requirement.

Update: In his blog, The Risk Factor, risk management expert Robert Charette, who is quoted in the Government Executive article on the Mitre analysis, discusses just what the Census Bureau means when they understand the handheld contract has "challenges."