Leave it to the federal government to find a way to bungle an event that has been on the calendar for 227 years. Preparations for the 2020 Census are underway, and oversight watchdogs are already finding serious problems that could hamper the once-a-decade, constitutionally-mandated ritual of determining the population of the United States.
The process is getting expensive. The 2010 Census was the most costly in history at $12.3 billion. The Government Accountability Office estimated that, “the average cost for counting a housing unit increased from about $16 in 1970 to around $92 in 2010.”
The 2020 Census aims to be the first Census to allow citizens to respond online, which would ideally lower the cost. However, an October GAO report found that the Census Bureau, “continues to face challenges in managing and overseeing the information technology (IT) programs, systems, and contracts supporting the 2020 Census.”
Unfortunately, GAO’s findings are not surprising. Federal technology procurement has been mismanaged for decades. More than 75 percent of the $80 billion spent annually on federal IT is being used for the operation and maintenance of legacy systems, some of which were built in the 1960s. These costs have increased in recent years due to the utter failure of federal agencies to modernize their systems. For example, the IRS still uses a fraud detection system from 1994 because its replacement has faced more than a decade of delays and millions of dollars of cost overruns. The Department of Defense uses a 53-year-old system with giant floppy disks to operate the nation’s nuclear forces.
The Census Bureau is facing a similar problem and seeing all too familiar results. Among the many issues uncovered by GAO are several delays in the 2018 field test, the failure of the Bureau to address countless security risks that could threaten the personal information of every American, and the fundamental conclusion that, “the Bureau’s cost estimate is not reliable and is out-of-date.”
In March 2017, GAO reported that the cost of the system designed to collect census data over the phone overran its estimate by $40 million. In May, GAO reported that the cost of the Census Enterprise Data Collection and Processing program, meant to centralize all Census data, increased by an additional $400 million. The cost of mobile devices used to collect Census data was $137 million over the original estimate.
With the Census 30 months away, only four of the bureau’s 43 new IT systems have been fully developed and tested, and 18 have not been delivered. These delays necessitate rushed, last-minute work that costs a pretty penny. GAO expects total IT costs to increase by at least $1.4 billion. To top it off, GAO has placed the 2020 Census on its 2017 High Risk List of programs most susceptible to waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement.
On September 8, 2016, GAO released eight common-sense recommendations that would streamline, organize, and simplify the 2020 Census. The recommendations included updating the cost estimates as soon as new data becomes available, maintaining a repeatable process for evaluating whether projects are on schedule, consistently documenting any risks as they come up, and establishing trigger events to detect and minimize risk. As of October 2017, the bureau had only fully implemented one of the recommendations.
There is no doubt that determining the population of a nation of 323 million people is a monumental task that entails dozens of moving parts and billions of taxpayer dollars. But when the event only occurs every 10 years, there is no excuse for failing to accurately, effectively, and efficiently accomplish the objective. So far, the 2020 Census is falling well short of those expectations.
Curtis Kalin (@CurtisKalin) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential. He is communications director for Citizens Against Government Waste.
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