In March of 2009 I accepted a position with the 2010 Decennial Census. I was hired as a “crew leader.” My training lasted about one week, and then I trained my own crew for the first project which began the nearly two-year long process.

We were expected to confirm or add every address in Washoe County from Sun Valley to the Oregon Border. Our time frame was one month. We finished in two weeks.

I completed one more project in the summer of 2009 and then joined the Reno office in October. Every project was finished ahead of schedule. When the office closed in October of 2010 we had finished early, and efforts across the country resulted in a savings of two-billion dollars. Apparently the 2020 Census will not be as successful.

As the Secretary of Commerce, Wilbur Ross is in charge of organizing the 2020 Census. The early projects have already begun. The information coming from the early efforts of thousands of temporary census workers across America is that there will be cost overruns. There is also great concern about security.

When we began ‘address canvasing’ in March of 2009 we were issued hand-held computers. They were manufactured by an outside company, and originally expected to be of use for projects throughout the next year. They failed horribly, at a cost of hundreds of dollars per unit. They were returned just over one-month after we began the project.

Ten years later the 2020 Decennial Census is facing very similar problems.

This Census is promised to be the first ‘paperless’ in history. It will be 100 percent digitized. Software issues from the initial projects have already added over $80 million to the budget.

Think about it; the Census Bureau had information and the experience of the last ten years to organize and prepare for the 2020 Census. It was Wilbur Ross’s responsibility, and a very important duty mandated by the Constitution. This is expected to be another failure by Trump’s unqualified and incompetent administration.

Trump has the ultimate responsibility to ensure that our government works. However, chasing a little white ball with a stick, and watching television are his priorities. Being a billionaire or a millionaire does not qualify a man or woman to be part of our federal government.

Op-ed by James Turnage

“The Truth Lives Here”

SOURCE

Image courtesy of DonkeyHotey

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