Census 2000 Enlists Technology Help

The list of technology companies lending a hand to the U.S. Census Bureau continues to grow. While Datacap (Tarrytown, NY),

FileNet (Costa Mesa, CA), and PeopleSoft (Pleasanton, CA) are preparing to track over 26 million time sheets a day, TRW (Oakland, CA) and DynCorp (Reston, VA) have joined forces to operate one of three data capture service facilities, in order to process an estimated 78.1 million census forms. TRW has contracted DynCorp to manage the operation of a capture facility, which at peak operation (March ­ July 1999) will process an estimated 20 million submissions and hire an additional estimated work force of 1,750. DynCorp has successfully undertaken a similar project for the U.S. Postal Service, according to VP Carl McNair Jr., so although this "will be a tremendous effort and an excellent opportunity for us," it isn't exactly unfamiliar territory. Meanwhile, on the forms processing side, Associated Solutions (Dallas) is including TMSSequoia's (Stillwater, OK) FormFix forms identification and processing software with its ICR3 forms processing solution, which will be used to scan, capture and process approximately 1.4 billion forms in 100 days. FormFix will be used primarily as an internal voting engine, helping ICR3's FormID module with image enhancement and line removal. Capturing data accurately makes a difference not only in the census results but also in terms of ROI, said Associated Solutions president Dennis Harvey, particularly when "dealing with volumes of this magnitude." The 8-11% improvement provided by the system will translate "into tens of millions of dollar savings," he said.