Big Government Waste & Incompetence

Flopping Aces ^ | 05-01-08 | Curt

[Starman417]

These are the kinds of stories that should be brought up when people tell you that they want the government to run all these Socialist ideas from the Democrats:

This time around, the Census Bureau wanted to do things differently, ditching paper for handheld computers that Census workers could use to collect and transmit data from those who don't fill out the forms sent through the mail.

It wasn't to be. Despite two years of development and a $600 million budget, the Census Bureau and Commerce Department recently decided that the $600 handhelds weren't up to the job...In the field, they proved to be slow and unreliable. The Bush Administration's official explanation is that the Census Bureau didn't get its requirements straight with the contractor, Florida-based Harris Corp. No doubt that's true...Even so, we doubt that "slow and unreliable" were part of the original specs in March 2006.

The article goes on to quote Tom Coburn who says they could of just brought Blackberries or IPhones, which would do the same damn thing for a much cheaper price. But no........1.3 billion down the drain from big government.

So lets add a whole new entitlement department to the government and let big daddy take care of your medical needs.

Nothing could go wrong there.....

[driftdiver]

‘He added: “A $400 iPhone can do twice as much as the $600 handheld. You could buy iPhones and do all of this.””

I don’t doubt the project was a failure but this statement is false. They were most likely looking for a web enabled mobile application. Or it was a custom application that required syncing. Industrial or commercial handhelds are usually hardened to some degree to make them sturdier. Thats is usually a siginficant portion of the cost. If you look at most of the handhelds out there $600 is actually pretty cheap. Especially if they included some sort of scanning capability.