5 ms·

It's funny how easy people think this is. Yes it's "just a data collection app". You're talking about an org that, if your address is in the middle of a swamp

It's funny how easy people think this is. Yes it's "just a data collection app". You're talking about an org that, if your address is in the middle of a swamp, they will send someone by boat to find you. They take collection and processing very seriously. If you gave a startup 200 million or whatever, you'd have a pretty accurate census of internet connected people in the top 20 cities in the US. Oh, and a declaration of victory from the startup, plus 300 billion in market cap in the hope that they may actually be able to count everyone someday! Somehow, i doubt you'd come up with something that can collect data well, know where to be focusing field representatives, etc with 600k+ field representatives in a reasonable and efficient manner. Has anyone here tried to organize people,targets, and data in say a company twice the size of all of IBM? How did that go? :) (the census is honestly relatively cheap. it costs about 50 bucks per person, total. Obviously, counting rural, etc areas is the majority of the cost) The 2020 Census is going to be weird, too. Disadvantaged minorities, etc are statistically less likely to be counted[1], and especially given the climate in the US, counting immigrants is going to be especially hard. [1] Which is why in the US, they democrats often try to pass rules around using statistical methods, and the republicans claim it requires actual enumeration

magila 10y ago
The difficulties you mention are entirely related to the operational costs of carrying out the census. I see no justification for the data collection system itself to cost over $900 million.
- DannyBee 10y ago
  Err, no. You understand this isn't a dumb mobile app someone types something into with a simple server backend right? It's the system that manages and handles the operational data collection and statistical analysis for the census. It's not a CRUD app bob types something into at the end of the day. It manages the whole effort.
  - NeutronBoy 10y ago
    And the cost likely includes wages/costs of people for things like training users on the system, setting up and running a help desk for census staff to call when they're completing the census, costs for managing and running procurement for the different components, etc.
  - cmdrfred 10y ago
    You've told us what it isn't, why not tell us what it is. "manages the whole effort" is pretty meaningless, a time sheet application can make that claim.
    - irq 10y ago
      Imagine building software to handle all the HR needs, IT needs, accounting needs, CRM needs, etc, for a 600,000 person company. Assume that this is also going to be the mother of legacy-tech-debt projects, too. Then, add on the feature of ingesting and actually processing and storing the raw census data, too. Then imagine that it's not a company, but a government agency doing that.
      - cmdrfred 10y ago
        >Then imagine that it's not a company, but a government agency doing that. I think that is the key takeaway here.
  - magila 10y ago
    I think we all agree that's it's not trivial. What is far less convincing is your case for it costing $900 million. Dispatching people to addresses is not a novel problem, package carriers do it every day. There isn't some massive R&D effort needed here. The tech already exists, the task at hand is merely a matter of application.
    - Declanomous 10y ago
      I know several people who worked for the last census. The issue you run in to is that people don't only live at addresses. For instance, they attempt to count all homeless people. They attempt to count everyone in prison. They try to count every single person in the United States. This is not as easy as you make it sound. For instance, how would you make sure you counted every transient effectively? The way the census solves that problem is to go out and count all of them in a single night. That's a level of accuracy mot people couldn't even begin to plan for. If you tasked FedEx with that problem, they'd probably find all the easy people and then hand off the rest to the USPS like they do for excessively rural customers.
nostromo 10y ago
I don't think people are saying it's easy. People are saying it's not $1.5b with an additional $1b for IT hard.
- DannyBee 10y ago
  based on what experience managing what large scale efforts?
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - tomc1985 10y ago
    Just because you're not a quarterback doesn't mean you can't know when the team sucks. "God, those Sportsballers are terrible!" "Shut up, John! Like you would know, do you play football? You didn't even make tryouts!"
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - DannyBee 10y ago
      "Just because you're not a quarterback doesn't mean you can't know when the team sucks." This is a great, meaningless, soundbite :) I was serious. People just dismiss the complexity out of hand, without even bothering to think that it might be harder than they think. Heck, if you want to go with your analogy: It's like saying "this team is too expensive to run" with not even the slightest idea of what actually goes into running a team. That isn't a thing you can do with any real sanity. you can't just stare at the small little piece you think you see and say the whole thing is a waste of time and money without any idea what is actually involved.
tinalumfoil 10y ago
> The 2020 Census is designed to cost less per housing unit than the 2010 Census (when adjusted for inflation), while continuing to maintain the highest standards of accuracy amongst all population groups [0] If it was obvious to the census this would be so expensive they shouldn't of advertised the system to congress as a cost saving measure. I value the census (probably more than most), but I won't cry foul about budget cuts until I'm convinced the per person cost of data collection is actually rising, as Thompson and Serrano seem to think. [0] https://www2.census.gov/about/budget/FY2017-census-budget.pdf https://www2.census.gov/about/budget/FY2017-census-budget.pd...
a3n 10y ago
> They take collection and processing very seriously. Well, it is a constitutional requirement. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Census https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Census But no problem, if they don't have enough money, they can just ... not do it. Or they can just count the ones that volunteer to be counted. That'll save gerrymandering having to be redrawn.
Futurebot 10y ago
The view of how much money this actually is is seriously skewed in these comments. US GDP is around $19 trillion. The cost of this program is 0.1% of GDP. For comparison, the B2 bomber cost $2.4B itself, and the Iraq was cost upwards of $12B a month. One can argue "we shouldn't spend on those either" (and I agree), but it's impossible to cogently argue that this is a lot of money. Like the budgets of the NEA and many other very cheap programs, it's an absolute pittance. A pittance.
- supergarfield 10y ago
  0.1% of GDP is actually fairly large. In isolation it's fine, but government probably have dozens or hundreds of similar "small" programs we never think about. So sure, wars cost a lot more money, but running a hundred programs that each cost you 2 billion dollars will also be very expensive. Not fundamentally disagreeing, I just think it's easy to miss the full picture if you conclude that 0.1% of GDP is negligible.
  - paulddraper 10y ago
    I saw 0.1% and freaked out.
  - jaquers 10y ago
    Your parent was off by an order of magnitude: $2B / $19,000B == 0.01% Agree with both points, 0.1% is not nothing - that's what NASA scrapes by on. FWIW, the article mentions a ramp up in spending going up to the census year - so I take it that this is not an annual cost.

magila 10y ago

The difficulties you mention are entirely related to the operational costs of carrying out the census. I see no justification for the data collection system itself to cost over $900 million.

DannyBee 10y ago
Err, no. You understand this isn't a dumb mobile app someone types something into with a simple server backend right? It's the system that manages and handles the operational data collection and statistical analysis for the census. It's not a CRUD app bob types something into at the end of the day. It manages the whole effort.
- NeutronBoy 10y ago
  And the cost likely includes wages/costs of people for things like training users on the system, setting up and running a help desk for census staff to call when they're completing the census, costs for managing and running procurement for the different components, etc.
- cmdrfred 10y ago
  You've told us what it isn't, why not tell us what it is. "manages the whole effort" is pretty meaningless, a time sheet application can make that claim.
  - irq 10y ago
    Imagine building software to handle all the HR needs, IT needs, accounting needs, CRM needs, etc, for a 600,000 person company. Assume that this is also going to be the mother of legacy-tech-debt projects, too. Then, add on the feature of ingesting and actually processing and storing the raw census data, too. Then imagine that it's not a company, but a government agency doing that.
    - cmdrfred 10y ago
      >Then imagine that it's not a company, but a government agency doing that. I think that is the key takeaway here.
- magila 10y ago
  I think we all agree that's it's not trivial. What is far less convincing is your case for it costing $900 million. Dispatching people to addresses is not a novel problem, package carriers do it every day. There isn't some massive R&D effort needed here. The tech already exists, the task at hand is merely a matter of application.
  - Declanomous 10y ago
    I know several people who worked for the last census. The issue you run in to is that people don't only live at addresses. For instance, they attempt to count all homeless people. They attempt to count everyone in prison. They try to count every single person in the United States. This is not as easy as you make it sound. For instance, how would you make sure you counted every transient effectively? The way the census solves that problem is to go out and count all of them in a single night. That's a level of accuracy mot people couldn't even begin to plan for. If you tasked FedEx with that problem, they'd probably find all the easy people and then hand off the rest to the USPS like they do for excessively rural customers.

nostromo 10y ago

I don't think people are saying it's easy. People are saying it's not $1.5b with an additional $1b for IT hard.

DannyBee 10y ago
based on what experience managing what large scale efforts?
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- tomc1985 10y ago
  Just because you're not a quarterback doesn't mean you can't know when the team sucks. "God, those Sportsballers are terrible!" "Shut up, John! Like you would know, do you play football? You didn't even make tryouts!"
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - DannyBee 10y ago
    "Just because you're not a quarterback doesn't mean you can't know when the team sucks." This is a great, meaningless, soundbite :) I was serious. People just dismiss the complexity out of hand, without even bothering to think that it might be harder than they think. Heck, if you want to go with your analogy: It's like saying "this team is too expensive to run" with not even the slightest idea of what actually goes into running a team. That isn't a thing you can do with any real sanity. you can't just stare at the small little piece you think you see and say the whole thing is a waste of time and money without any idea what is actually involved.

tinalumfoil 10y ago

> The 2020 Census is designed to cost less per housing unit than the 2010 Census (when adjusted for inflation), while continuing to maintain the highest standards of accuracy amongst all population groups [0] If it was obvious to the census this would be so expensive they shouldn't of advertised the system to congress as a cost saving measure. I value the census (probably more than most), but I won't cry foul about budget cuts until I'm convinced the per person cost of data collection is actually rising, as Thompson and Serrano seem to think. [0] https://www2.census.gov/about/budget/FY2017-census-budget.pdf https://www2.census.gov/about/budget/FY2017-census-budget.pd...

a3n 10y ago

> They take collection and processing very seriously. Well, it is a constitutional requirement. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Census https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Census But no problem, if they don't have enough money, they can just ... not do it. Or they can just count the ones that volunteer to be counted. That'll save gerrymandering having to be redrawn.

Futurebot 10y ago

The view of how much money this actually is is seriously skewed in these comments. US GDP is around $19 trillion. The cost of this program is 0.1% of GDP. For comparison, the B2 bomber cost $2.4B itself, and the Iraq was cost upwards of $12B a month. One can argue "we shouldn't spend on those either" (and I agree), but it's impossible to cogently argue that this is a lot of money. Like the budgets of the NEA and many other very cheap programs, it's an absolute pittance. A pittance.

supergarfield 10y ago
0.1% of GDP is actually fairly large. In isolation it's fine, but government probably have dozens or hundreds of similar "small" programs we never think about. So sure, wars cost a lot more money, but running a hundred programs that each cost you 2 billion dollars will also be very expensive. Not fundamentally disagreeing, I just think it's easy to miss the full picture if you conclude that 0.1% of GDP is negligible.
- paulddraper 10y ago
  I saw 0.1% and freaked out.
- jaquers 10y ago
  Your parent was off by an order of magnitude: $2B / $19,000B == 0.01% Agree with both points, 0.1% is not nothing - that's what NASA scrapes by on. FWIW, the article mentions a ramp up in spending going up to the census year - so I take it that this is not an annual cost.