Census Bureau: Playing at Risk Management

The GAO announced on Thursday that it had placed the Census Bureau's 2010 census effort on its high risk list. This is very unusual, as the GAO's press release pointedly notes:

"Although a regular update to its high-risk list is set for 2009, GAO decided it was important to flag the census now because of the survey's impact on everything from the apportionment of congressional seats to the distribution of billions of dollars in federal funds.

"GAO added the upcoming census to the high-risk list due to a combination of long-standing deficiencies and emerging challenges, including shortcomings in the Census Bureau's management of information technology, weak performances by technology that the Bureau plans to use for data collection, uncertainty of cost estimates, and the elimination of several dress rehearsal activities."

So what were the problems that made the GAO reward the Census Bureau with such an honor?