Glitches force Census to scrap high-tech plans for 2010 count

This was to be the first truly high-tech count in the nation's history. The Census Bureau had awarded a contract to purchase 500,000 of the computers, at a cost of more than $600 million. The contract is now projected to balloon to $1.3 billion, even though the bureau will scale back its purchase to 151,000 computers.

The devices, which look like fancy cellphones, will still be used to verify every residential street address in the country, using global positioning system software.

But workers going door to door will not be able to use them to collect information from the residents who did not return their census forms. About a third of US residents are expected not to return the forms. The Census Bureau plans to hire and train nearly 600,000 temporary workers to do the canvassing.

Gutierrez attributed many of the problems to "a lack of effective communication with one of our key contractors."

"As I have said before, the situation today is unacceptable, and we have been taking steps to address the issues," said Gutierrez, who oversees the Census Bureau.

In fact, interviews, congressional testimony, and government reports describe an agency that was unprepared to manage the contract for the hand-held computers. Census officials are being accused of doing a poor job of spelling out technical requirements to the contractor, The Harris Corp., which is based in Florida.

The computers proved too complex for some temporary workers who tried to use them in a test last year in North Carolina. Also, the computers were not initially programmed to transmit the large amounts of data necessary.

At one point, the Census Bureau identified more than 400 new or clarified technical requirements for the computer system, Gutierrez said.

He said the Census Bureau was unaccustomed to working with an outside vendor on such a large contract.

For example, he said, the original contract called for paying Harris $36 million to operate a help desk to assist census-takers who have computer problems. That figure has since jumped to $217 million.