WASHINGTON — Technology problems will force the government to count all of the nation’s 300 million residents the old-fashioned way in the 2010 census — with paper and pencil.
Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez was scheduled to tell a House subcommittee Thursday that the government will scrap plans to use handheld computers to collect information from the millions of Americans who don’t return census forms mailed out by the government.
The change will add as much as $3 billion to the cost of the constitutionally mandated count, pushing the overall cost to more than $14 billion.
The project to develop the computers “has experienced significant schedule, performance, and cost issues,” Gutierrez said in prepared testimony before a House Appropriations subcommittee. “A lack of effective communication with one of our key contractors has significantly contributed to the challenges.
“As I have said before, the situation today is unacceptable, and we have been taking steps to address the issues,” he said.
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