YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT NO-WORK – AT 8:28 A.M. ET:  Your government shows it is indeed expert in one critical area – wasting years of time.  Apparently the census takers have a problem.  And remember that their results will determine the way seats in the House of Representatives are proportioned:

LOS ANGELES (AP) - A computer system that the Census Bureau needs to manage its door-to-door count of the U.S. population remained buggy and prone to crash a day before enumerators were set to begin their work, government officials said Friday.

Let's see, they've had ten years to prepare since the last census.  But that's five minutes in government years.

The bureau's Paper Based Operations Control System did not function reliably in tests and, despite hardware and software upgrades, "may not be able to perform as needed under full operational loads," the U.S. Government Accountability Office said in a report.

In other words, it can't count correctly.  Isn't that what the census is about?

"So far, it is not as stable as it needs to be," GAO Strategic Issues Director Robert Goldenkoff said before the start of a congressional hearing on the census.

The paper-based system's hasty design began in early 2008, after the census bureau scrapped plans to use a handheld-computer method that ended up costing more than $700 million but did not operate adequately.

You know, guys, I go to the Apple Store.  I buy my computers.  They work.  They even work under "full operational loads."  And they're as stable as they need to be.  Shall I send you the address of the store?  I know some good sales people who actually know what "boot" means.  And look, you're government.  Maybe there's a discount, or a free subscription to Macworld.   

The system will generate assignments for the roughly 635,000 enumerators hired to visit about 48 million homes to tally people who did not return their census forms by mail.

When we're told that 85% of the population looks like the Democratic Party base, we'll know that the software wasn't quite right.

There have also been massive problems in the FBI computer system, and in systems under development for the FAA.  If government big shots want these systems to work, they should check out the expertise in the dorm rooms of any good American college, and forget some of the favored "contractors" they've been indulging.

May 3, 2010