(From Popular Mechanics)” It looks like the latest smartphone-on-steroids, teeming with everything from GPS and wireless to a touchscreen and a stylus. Throw in an SD memory slot, fingerprint authentication and Windows Mobile 5.0, and you’ve got a powerful, easy-to-use PDA in your hands. Trouble is (besides being clunky at nearly twice the size of BlackBerry), once inefficient bureaucrats will be the only ones allowed to use it come 2010.”

(First reaction–why a device that is department specific? Why not a flexible device programmable for different department needs? Nonetheless, the time, cost and (human) energy savings seem real and visible.)

“It’s the U.S. Census Bureau’s first handheld computer (HHC), and it’s coming to survey a home near you. Developed as part of a federal mandate to make census data collection more secure, officials hope the HHC will cut down on time, paper and human error during the next census. “We’re expected to save a billion dollars,” says Mike Murray, the HHC project leader for Harris Corp., the government contractor working on the device, more than 500,000 of which are being manufactured by mobile giant HTC.”

(Does it really take 500,000 people to count 300 million? How many will it take using this device?)

“When census takers get their hands on them, the HHCs will come with 10 hours of battery life to get through a day’s worth of door knocking—plus a built-in GPS unit to them to those doors in the first place. After collecting data with a stylus and step-by-step touchscreen interface, they can simply upload the information to U.S. Census headquarters via Sprint’s encrypted data network. (A dial-up modem comes embedded for remote areas without wireless.) It’s all secured by a biometric fingerprint reader that keeps non-authorized users off the device—and the authorized ones off the phone with the bureau for forgetting passwords (21st-century bureaucracy wasn’t built in a day).”

(Ticking the right boxes so far–encrypted data network, biometric gummy print reader–what happens when it’s lost or stolen?)

“Now U.S. Census officials say the HHC should cut the number of printed forms from 130 million to about 90 million, and save $525 million in workforce reprioritization. And you thought cutting red tape only came for the holidays.”

Big question is, what happens to all 500,000 for the ten-year period between censuses? (censi? What’s the plural of census?)