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Automated Field Data Collection for the 2010 Census
The U.S. Constitution requires that a census of the Nation's population be taken every ten years to decide how many seats in the House of Representatives will be allocated to each state. State and local governments use census data to draw legislative districts that comply with the Voting Rights Act. The federal government distributes approximately $200 billion annually in grants based on census data.
While Census 2000 was an operational and data quality success, it was conducted with high cost and at great operational risk. In response, the Department of Commerce and the U.S. Census Bureau have developed a multi-year effort to completely modernize and re-engineer the 2010 Census of Population and Housing.
One of the lessons learned from Census 2000 is that to significantly reduce the cost of the census, the Census Bureau must reduce the amount of paper used in the field, and the large number of staff and voluminous office space required to handle that paper. Thus, for 2010, the Census Bureau is proposing to use Hand Held Computers (HHCs), equipped with global positioning system (GPS) capability, to enable it to completely restructure the data collection, data capture and data processing operations.
The Census Bureau will need to train and equip (at the peak of operations) about 500,000 temporary interviewers with these HHCs. The HHCs must provide the enumerators with the ability to receive daily updated assignment listings, conduct interviews using an automated questionnaire, capture daily progress and payroll information, and daily transmit these electronic data to a centralized place for further processing. These devices must be easy to carry, simple to operate, reliable, usable under various weather conditions, and inexpensive to buy and maintain. In addition to these hardware requirements, various software applications for the HHCs will need to be developed, integrated, deployed, and managed through a nationwide structure involving 12 regional offices and approximately 500 temporary local census offices. In meeting these goals of its Field Data Collection Automation (FDCA) program, the Census Bureau is looking for help from American industry.
In addition, the Census Bureau is looking for contractors who can provide equipment, local area networks, communications, maintenance and supporting services for the temporary decentralized offices that will be set up across the United States and Puerto Rico. This will involve both system design and software development and testing services in support of critical administrative, data collection control, and management applications deployed to the local offices and mobile census workers. At peak, the field infrastructure and its related applications must support, in a very time critical environment, workloads in excess of 60 million addresses and field assignments for about 500,000 temporary field workers. These systems and applications must be able to interface with other Census Bureau systems used in preparing for and conducting the field data collection effort.
To provide information to potential contractors about FDCA, the Census Bureau has established a web site with detailed background information, reports, and other documents. The address of the website is at http://www.census.gov/procur/www/fdca.
As planning progresses the Census Bureau will add additional documents to this site, so interested vendors should check the site frequently and register online to receive updates. In addition, the Census Bureau will sponsor a FDCA Industry Day for interested companies to meet Census Bureau officials, learn more about the FDCA program, and make contact with other interested companies and potential partners.
Source: U.S. Census Bureau
Acquisition Division
Created: 8/9/2004
Last Revised: August 12, 2004
