On Thursday the Commerce Department admitted what others, including the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) and the Government Accountability Office (GAO) have said for some time now: the U.S. Census Bureau has horribly mismanaged its investment in technology for the 2010 Census, costing taxpayers billions of dollars.

First, a quick review on how the census works. From a citizen's point of view, the census takes place in three stages:

• 1. In mid-March 2010 the Census Bureau will send out a questionnaire to every household on file.
• 2. In mid-April 2010 Census will send out a second questionnaire to households that did not respond to the first questionnaire.
• 3. From July to November, temporary census workers will canvass neighborhoods and conduct follow-up interviews with households that have not responded.

Originally, the Census Bureau contracted with the Harris Corporation to develop wireless handheld computers for census workers to use in the field during follow-up interviews. The contractor was to provide 500,000 of these devices at a cost of $600 million dollars. That means that each device cost $1,200, or about twice what a laptop computer costs.

Now Census Bureau says, "nevermind," we are not going to use these handheld devices because of technical problems and cost overruns. Instead, the canvassers will go back to the old method of paper-and-pencils.

Most people might think that by eliminating the expensive technology the Census Bureau might save money. However, by scrapping the handheld devices the census will actually cost an additional $3 billion dollars, with the total bill for the American taxpayer at almost $15 billion. That will make the 2010 Census the most expensive census in history - more than three times the total cost of the 2000 Census.

To help pay for its mistake, the Commerce Department has proposed pulling funding from other department initiatives such as the Technology Innovation Program (TIP), the successor to the successful Advanced Technology Program (ATP). TIP provides grants for high risk, high reward research that addresses areas of critical national need. For example, these grants have funded everything from advances in digital signal processing to more efficient solar cells. These government officials seem to miss the irony in reducing our investment in technology and innovation, just when the government seems to need it the most.

The first mistake that the Census Bureau made was, believe it or not, to eliminate the Internet response option for the 2010 Census. You can renew your driver's license online and use software like Turbo Tax to pay your taxes, but you wont be able to use the Internet to fill out you census form. Even more unbelievable is that in 2000, respondents could use the Internet to complete their census form. Even though Census Bureau never promoted the online option, a later review by the Census Bureau marveled at the Internet option's success, stating:

The software and hardware developed for this program could have handled tens of millions of records instead of the tens of thousands it did handle….The Internet option in Census 2000 was an operational success.

Sadly, just as the U.S. has fallen behind in broadband over the last 8 years, it has fallen behind in government use of IT, being one of the few nations not allowing its citizens to fill out their census forms online. Most developed countries that conduct questionnaire-style censuses have a totally secure and trustworthy Internet option. For example, 19 percent of Canadians used the Internet to complete its 2006 population census.

Even local communities have turned to the Internet for their surveys. For example, in Virginia all school districts must conduct a census of their residents to verify the number of school age children in their jurisdiction. This year the Arlington Public School system offered residents the option of completing the census online.

By implementing an Internet response option the Census Bureau would have almost certainly saved money. As the recent ITIF report found, assuming a 20 percent response rate, the Census Bureau would have saved about $35 million.

More importantly, if the Census Bureau had used the Internet, it would not have needed to spend hundreds of millions of dollars developing a custom mobile handheld device for canvassers. Instead, canvassers could have simply submitted responses through the website using off-the-shelf laptops when conducting door-to-door interviews.

But it gets even worse. After the 2010 Census, the Census Bureau had no plans to reuse their custom handheld devices, so these devices were likely headed to a landfill, probably next to where FEMA is storing its trailers. But by using standard off-the-shelf laptops, the Census Bureau would not only have saved around $300 million, the government could have turned around and donated these PCs to low-income schools that qualify for the government's "E-rate" program. Donating these PCs would not pose any privacy risks because these computers would have only been used to access the Internet and would have no sensitive data stored on them. But it would provide half a million of our neediest kids free laptops on which they can learn and engage with the digital world.

But that's all a pipe dream now as we will be filling out our census forms like it's 1999.

In 2000, the U.S. Census Bureau established itself as a digital pioneer by making the United States one of the first countries to use an Internet-based data collection method for its population census. Through this project, the United States demonstrated that it was a global leader in using information technology (IT) for e-government. Unfortunately, though, citing various challenges, the U.S. Census Bureau has cancelled all plans to use the Internet for data collection in the 2010 population census. The Census Bureau has also opted not to implement an Internet response option for the American Community Survey (ACS), which has replaced the long form used in the decennial census.

The Census Bureau’s decision not to provide an Internet response option for the census was made in part because the Census Bureau asserts that Internet data collection will not increase response rates or lower data collection costs. In addition, the Census Bureau argues that introducing an Internet response option could pose new security risks. Yet a closer look at the Census Bureau’s arguments shows little basis for most of its claims. Internet-based transactions are generally less costly, more accurate and can be more secure than their paper-based counterparts. The Census Bureau itself experienced generally positive results in its earlier tests of an Internet response option, yet it failed to fully explore how most effectively to implement a similar approach in the 2010 Census. Our review of the census data collection methodologies used by government statistics agencies in countries other than the United States shows that other countries, including Canada, Norway, and Australia, have far surpassed the United States in the use of the Internet to conduct the census.

Government agencies in the United States should be embracing the use of IT where it can provide more efficient and effective services. We recommend that Congress mandate that the Census Bureau recommit to a strategy of technical leadership and develop e-government solutions that are appropriate for our digital society. To take advantage of the benefits of Internet-based data collection, we specifically recommend that the U.S. Census Bureau do the following:

• Provide an online data collection option for the next decennial population census after 2010 and the American Community Survey.

• As a matter of policy, provide an Internet response option for all major household surveys that allow a paper response.

• Promote the Internet survey response option as a secure, low-cost, and time-saving option.

The Technical Guidelines Development Committee (TGDC), a committee authorized by the Help America Vote Act, has released to the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) its recommended voluntary voting system guidelines (VVSG). These guidelines include significant changes that would eliminate the use of existing direct recording electronic (DRE) voting systems in the majority of states if the EAC adopts their recommendations.

In this statement, delivered to the EAC at a public meeting on December 11 in Austin, TX, ITIF Senior Analyst Daniel Castro discusses these recommended guidelines and the importance of innovation for improving our voting technology. Specifically, this statement discusses the need for functional standards, as opposed to design standards, to promote innovation in voting systems. It also finds fault with the recommendation that all voting systems be “software independent” and describes how the real goal of any voting system is to be “human independent.”

Americans trust computers to run critical applications in fields such as banking, medicine, and aviation, but a growing technophobic movement believes that no computer can be trusted for electronic voting. Members of this movement claim that in order to have secure elections, Americans must revert to paper ballots. Such claims are not only incorrect but attack the very foundation of our digital society, which is based on the knowledge that information can be reasonably secured. Clearly, no system with a human element-including electronic and nonelectronic voting machines-is error-proof, and specific versions of certain voting machines have security weaknesses. Neither of these facts, however, should be taken as a universal indictment of e-voting.

Direct recording electronic (DRE) voting machines are electronic machines, similar to ATMs, that let voters view ballots on a screen and make choices using an input device such as buttons or a touchscreen. Some opponents of electronic voting are lobbying for legislation that would require so-called "voter-verified paper audit trails" for all DRE voting machines. The purpose of the paper audit trails would be to provide proof that the DRE voting machines functioned correctly. Unfortunately, as discussed in this report, paper audit trails for DRE voting machines have several shortcomings. They do not provide complete security to voters and they increase costs and risks. Furthermore, requiring voter-verified paper audit trails would prevent the use of innovative voting technology that offers voters more security, transparency, and reliability than can be delivered with paper audit trails alone.

Congress is now considering legislation that would mandate that all DRE voting machines have voter-verified paper audit trails, and many states will vote on similar legislation this year. We believe it is time for the debate on e-voting technology to move beyond a discussion of paper audit trails. To restore voter confidence and promote secure election technology in the United States by ensuring that states can continue to improve their voting systems, we recommend the following:

• Congress and the states should allow the use of fully electronic ballots, not restrict electronic voting systems to those that create paper ballots.

• Congress and the states should require that future voting machines have verifiable audit trails, not require machines that create verifiable paper audit trails.

• Congress should provide funding for the U.S. Election Assistance Commission to issue grants for developing secure cryptographic voting protocols and for pilot testing of new voting technology.