Census Handhelds: Asking the Right Question

Last week Commerce Department Secretary Carlos Gutierrez told a House panel that the Census Bureau was dropping plans to use newly developed handheld computers to collect information from Americans who did not mail in census forms for the 2010 census. In his testimony, he said the handhelds were part of a larger plan to make the census "better, faster, and simpler."

The plan, Gutierrez said, was to address the increasing problems that the bureau is facing that threaten the accuracy of the census, including a larger population, the changing shape and diversity of American families, and a decreased response rate to the census because of a growing distrust of government and because of privacy concerns. These problems have led to lower productivity of the temporary workers the bureau hires to go door to door to count Americans, which requires hiring even more temporary workers to make up for the lost work. Gutierrez said the bureau developed the GPS enabled handhelds to collect more accurate address locations to make it easier for the workers to find residences.