Ask HN: Why does it cost $1.4B to take the US census? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Why does it cost $1.4B to take the US census?

9 pointsjedberg7 comments

I was reading an article today about the head of the census quitting, citing lack of funding from the Trump admin. In the article, is says they requested $1.4B to take the 2020 census, $936M of which was for "computer system upgrades".

I understand they need staff to go around and hassle people who haven't filled out the forms, find the homeless, etc, and also marketing expenses to get people to fill it out.

But $1.4B seems ridiculously high, and so do $936M for computers.

Is anyone familiar with what is involved in a census that can tell me why it costs so much? I'm having trouble finding good (digestible) info with Google.

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1.4B / 10 years = 140M a year to hire people to go out and talk to residents and systems to collate it. I've nothing to compare that to to sanity check it but it does seem high.

1.4B / ~ 300 million is about 4.33 usd per person. That doesn't seem all that high especially if you divide that 4.33 / 10 as the census occurs every 10 years.

It is 1.4B for 2017, not per census cycle. On the actual year of the census it will be even more.

Do they actually get data from 300m people?

Pretty close.

One year we didn't fill out the foum, and they came and knocked on our door, twice.

It isn't the data collection thats expensive it is the cross checking and completeness that is expensive.

First, that's just for 2017. Each progressive year before 2020 will be even higher.

Second, the link below to the 2017 budget details provides some detailed answers:

https://www2.census.gov/about/budget/FY2017-census-budget-su...

General budget page:

https://www.census.gov/about/budget.html

tl;dr - the $778 million is for a wide range of modernization efforts, not just "computers".

It isn't $936M for computers, it is for "computer system upgrades". I would guess that includes software upgrades and licenses and, possibly, programming.

Also: PII (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personally_identifiable_info...), definitely when combined with 'government' makes for expensive systems, partly rightfully so.

Furthermore, would you as the civic duty minded citizen plan to tread deep into the desert or bayou to find the rural citizens for their census? Can't exactly automate that.

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