From WaPo, U.S. Census director resigns amid turmoil over funding of 2020 count:
The director of the U.S. Census Bureau is resigning, leaving the agency leaderless at a time when it faces a crisis over funding for the 2020 decennial count of the U.S. population and beyond.
John H. Thompson, who has served as director since 2013 and worked for the bureau for 27 years before that, will leave June 30, the Commerce Department announced Tuesday.
The news, which surprised census experts, follows an April congressional budget allocation for the census that critics say is woefully inadequate. And it comes less than a week after a prickly hearing at which Thompson told lawmakers that cost estimates for a new electronic data collection system had ballooned by nearly 50 percent.
h/t Bruce Bartlett.
And it comes less than a week after a prickly hearing at which Thompson told lawmakers that cost estimates for a new electronic data collection system had ballooned by nearly 50 percent.
…versus
(Bloomberg) — The public employees responsible for overseeing $600 million in contracts to build healthcare.gov were inadequately trained, kept sloppy records, and failed to identify delays and problems that contributed to millions in cost overruns.
Perhaps there are some things just outside of government’s managerial capabilities.
private sector decision makers misfire on proposed budgets and costs all the time as well. private constructions projects routinely miss the budget and become dormant, possibly bankrupt. i have yet to talk with an IT person in a company who proposed a new IT project that was not massively over budget. this is less a “government” problem, and more a “management” problem common to people in general.