The Harvard Business Review's Daily Stat for Tuesday, April 6, 2010, highlighted a disruptive innovation in, of all things, census-taking. According to the publication:
It's a national census of hundreds of millions of people across 8 million square kilometers, using a workforce of 230,000 and budget of $1.4 billion. The 2010 U.S. Census? No, it's Brazil's 2010 census. The current U.S. headcount, by contrast, requires 3.8 million workers and $14 billion. Census takers in Brazil use PDAs and laptops; those in the U.S. still rely mainly on paper. - Source: Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatístic
While the United States tends to be seen as the technology innovation capital of the world, it seems we’re falling down in “government services innovation.” Doesn’t the US Census fall under the administration’s social innovation program? What other program is intended to have an impact on every single citizen of the US, if not this one?
On any corner of a typical US city, one can buy GPS-enabled, off-the-shelf, 3G-powered mobile devices, with local storage for data collection and Web-enabled connections to the back office. In short, the perfect mobile device for census collections is almost a commodity.
But it seems the US Census Bureau made the classic Innovator's Dilemma mistake of choosing the slow, safe (and expensive) player, while the consumer mobile world blew by.
The supplier in question is Harris Corp. (NYSE: HRS), which started work on the mobile census project in 2006. It turns out that four years is an eternity in the modern mobile world, and Harris simply couldn’t match the speed of the market with its own proprietary, custom-built devices.
In contrast to the US approach to having custom devices built, Brazil partnered with LG Electronics Inc. (London: LGLD; Korea: 6657.KS) , as noted in TechTicker: "Brazil will start taking its population census in the second half of this year and to ensure a smooth and efficient counting, the Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatistica (IBGE) has roped in LG to supply 150,000 GM750 phones."
The GM750 is ruggedized and comes with its own application; but otherwise, the core phone itself is a device anyone with $100 or less could buy at the corner mobile store.
You may be thinking, who really cares? Perhaps we all should. According to CNN, Hermann Habermann, a former deputy director of the Census Bureau, thinks that without handheld data collection via mobile phone, the government is missing out on a chance to get information more quickly and cheaply than through the mail.
The technology would also help to better identify which Census tract a home is in, which determines an area's representation in Congress and the distribution of more than $435 billion in federal funds every year. With GPS, according to CNN, the Census Bureau’s Daniel Weinberg, assistant director for the decennial census, anticipated placing residences within a 0.5 percent error rate into the correct tract. Without GPS, the Census Bureau places approximately 5 percent of residences in the wrong tract.
Unfortunately, with the fallback to paper, the error rate is likely to remain, as is the (inadvertent) mis-distribution of funds. While a 4.5 percent error differential may not seem like much, when you’re distributing billions of dollars each percentage point is quite significant in its effect on the local and state economies.
Lessons learned? Pay attention to the trends happening in parallel to your “normal” business and technology world -- or you may find that your technological innovation has been disrupted by the fast movers you couldn’t be bothered to notice.
Whether in private, public, government, or other spaces, look around, and you'll see disruption creeping up on you. Be aware of the technology environment and evolve! Or suffer the costs.
— Dan Keldsen is a Principal and Strategic Advisor at Information Architected.
The really scary thing in what you just mentioned is the Congresswoman from Minnesota doesn't even know how the Census works. The people running our Country don't even know how it works.
1. Mash up systems to create the hybrid system that will make this all work the way it should, higher efficiency, more effective, lowered costs and time.
2. Contact the Department of Redundancy Department to clear this all up.
But it seems the US Census Bureau made the classic Innovator's Dilemma mistake of choosing the slow, safe (and expensive) player, while the consumer mobile world blew by.
The supplier in question is Harris Corp. (NYSE: HRS), which started work on the mobile census project in 2006. It turns out that four years is an eternity in the modern mobile world, and Harris simply couldn’t match the speed of the market with its own proprietary, custom-built devices.
I think you are quite right about how government contracting often works... I am not sure that Harris is the biggest player in hand held mobile devices! but it probably has the best contacts in the government procurement office of teh census department
It's good to hear from someone knowledgeable on the subject from personal experience - when you mention the laptops weren't used because they didn't have enough for everyone, don't you think it would have made sense to at least let the crew leaders use them? Or use a lottery to distribute them? It makes me think they got rid of them rather than deal with internecine fighting over whose district got shorted.
One thing this shows is that the government can't use new technology if we don't let our representatives authorize the money for it. And if we're not willing to pay for it, or demand that contracts be awarded according to the best value, rather than patronage, then we don't have much right to complain about how inefficient the old technology is.
Not quite sure where you are getting your information, Root Maniac.
From my girlfriend. Who has been working for the Census as a verifier ( and training to be an enumerator). She's been verifying addresses and updating the many errors on the census maps. So you are partially correct; the enumerators will be using nice accurate maps that have been verified and updated by people like her.
...you will never convince me that computers are more reliable than paper-and-pencil.
And, as a systems administrator, I completely agree.
homesteadtraders, I suspect that part of the reason for the questions going further than mere headcount is quality control. If all the Census takers had to do was say, "How many people lived here on April 1? kthxbai," then there would be a lot of data falsification -- which can and does happen. If you have to find out names, origins/ethnicities, and ask a whole bunch of other questions too, data falsification becomes a lot more difficult to do without getting found out.
Not quite sure where you are getting your information, Root Maniac. I am pretty sure that the U.S. Census uses finished, polished copies of maps, with natural bodies, roads, and train tracks indicated.
Bear in mind that old-fashioned maps are not wholly replaceable by GPS because the point of U.S. Census enumeration is to determine April 1, 2010, status. Enumeration may not take place until later, so real time GPS is not a tremendously helpful replacement. For these reasons, the Census has to still keep known housing units as of 4/1/10 on its maps.
While I am sure that part of the reason for spending so much on the decennial census is as a jobs program, part of it -- I am sure -- is because of the high turnover that the operation has. Because the Census attracts many low-skilled workers, having to count on every Census taker to have the necessary computer skills is a risk that the Census Bureau may not be willing to take at this point. (And, speaking as a curmudgeonly attorney who just this morning had a routine insurance matter completely screwed up because a software bug completely obliterated my computer's ability to print, you will never convince me that computers are more reliable than paper-and-pencil.)
There are many other good reasons why sticking to a paper-and-pencil system for now may make sense for the U.S. Census Bureau. Let's bear in mind that Brazil and the U.S. are two different countries with different infrastructures, different cultures, different economic/job markets, and so on. Additionally, let's remember that we have no idea yet how well the new electronic system will work for Brazil. It makes little sense to play Monday morning quarterback on Saturday afternoon.
The ThinkerNet does not reflect the views of TechWeb. The ThinkerNet is an informal means of communication to members and visitors of the Internet Evolution site. Individual authors are chosen by Internet Evolution to blog. Neither Internet Evolution nor TechWeb assume responsibility for comments, claims, or opinions made by authors and ThinkerNet bloggers. They are no substitute for your own research and should not be relied upon for trading or any other purpose.
Economists cannot decide whether we are in a recession, a depression, recovery mode, or stagnant at this point, but there is no doubt the economy of 2008-2009 has been top of mind for most organizations.
New York's Metropolitan Transit Authority is conducting a pilot test of digital kiosks to guide subway users to where they want to go more efficiently and at lower cost.
The FBI recently issued a warning to smartphone users, highlighting two mobile malware applications: Loozfan, which steals personal information, and FinFisher, which is spyware that takes over a smartphone's functions.
With the advent of low-cost Web cameras and broadband network connections, home security systems have become a hot business. In addition to traditional security suppliers, like ADT, the market is attracting telcos, cable companies, and energy providers, thereby creating an area of increasing competition.
There's a lot of debate on whether ceding control of the Internet to the ITU/UN is bad for the Internet. Whether that's really true depends on just how much of the "control" we yield and what we do to balance the Internet as an innovation platform and as a service platform.
Watching TV is not healthy for you, according to conventional wisdom. Well, that may soon change. Comcast and United Healthcare are now delivering diabetes prevention videos on-demand to high-risk patients. The partnership illustrates how healthcare may be delivered in the future.
New York's Metropolitan Transit Authority is conducting a pilot test of digital kiosks to guide subway users to where they want to go more efficiently and at lower cost.
The whole Amazon.reader debate is a double-stupid. It's stupid to think that there's any e-book buyer who doesn't know Amazon's URL, and it was stupider to let ICANN launch the whole free-form TLD initiative to start with.
While NFC's original goal was to enhance mobile commerce applications, it is finding its way into a number of other uses, which is creating both opportunity as well as challenges for IT departments.
Enterprises would like to move to cloud computing but are hesitant because they are concerned about providers’ ability to secure company data. Here are some tips that help to ensure that if breaches occur, the business is not left holding the bag.
Edmunds separates customers into segments based on the info it collects on its site and from partners, and uses that to push out custom content, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
The automotive website uses propensity modeling to target ads and customer registration forms, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
Expert Integrated Systems: Changing the Experience & Economics of IT In this e-book, we take an in-depth look at these expert integrated systems -- what they are, how they work, and how they have the potential to help CIOs achieve dramatic savings while restoring IT's role as business innovator. READ THIS eBOOK
your weekly update of news, analysis, and
opinion from Internet Evolution - FREE! REGISTER HERE
Wanted! Site Moderators Internet Evolution is looking for a handful of readers to help moderate the message boards on our site – as well as engaging in high-IQ conversation with the industry mavens on our thinkerNet blogosphere. The job comes with various perks, bags of kudos, and GIANT bragging rights. Interested?
To save this item to your list of favorite Internet Evolution content so you can find it later in your Profile page, click the "Save It" button next to the item.
Email This
