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What now? That's the hard question. When an IT project is in trouble, it's easy to ask what went wrong and who's to blame. Easy and popular. And fun, if you're not on the hot seat. But what to do to save the project? That's harder -- a lot harder. Especially when, as with the U.S. Census Bureau's "paperless census" project, it can't be killed and can't be delayed.
This month, the Government Accountability Office reported that the bureau's plan to use handheld computers for much of the 2010 census is in trouble. The GAO noted cost overruns and project management issues that it has pointed out for years (see story).
But the big problem is a single device: the custom handheld designed to be used by 525,000 "enumerators" temporarily hired to track down the estimated 100 million Americans who won't return their census forms.
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