Yet another Bush legacy. Computer World reports that an effort to create a paperless census for 2010 is likely to be scrapped due to miscommunication between the Census Bureau and the contractor hired for the IT upgrades (at a cost of $595 million):
The Government Accountability Office on Wednesday said the U.S. Census plan to create a "virtually paperless" counting process is at "high risk," meaning it now joins a GAO dishonor roll of government IT projects in trouble for mismanagement and waste...
The Founding Fathers wrote a requirement for a national decennial census into the U.S. Constitution -- it is, in a sense, one of the oldest IT deadlines around. But with the clock ticking, Carlos Gutierrez, secretary of the Department of Commerce (the department which oversees the Census Bureau), all but declared the project mismanaged in his written testimony Wednesday before the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.
The clearest political implications of this are a 2010 census that is inaccurate and open to partisan mischief. Congressional district lines are redrawn after a census is taken, and if Tom Delay and TRMPAC's efforts down in Texas in '03 are any indication, the possibility of corruption entering the system is very real.
--Mori Dinauer
