PDA's are Ready for Decennial Census

Harris Corporation, an international communications and information technology company, has successfully demonstrated a unique wireless PDA that will be used by 500,000 census takers - helping to create the first virtually paperless census in 2010. The wireless, handheld device is a key component of the U.S. Census Bureau's Field Data Collection Automation (FDCA) program that will ultimately save taxpayers $1 billion.

The recent demonstration showed the successful operation of the FDCA handheld computer - an element of the FDCA Mobile Computing Environment - over the Sprint network. Sprint is part of the Harris FDCA team, providing telecommunications services for the program. The Harris FDCA team is on track to deliver 1,400 of the handheld units that will be used for the spring 2007 address update operations, and also has completed the production readiness review for the 500,000 handheld units that will support the 2010 Decennial Census.

Traditionally, census field data collection was handled primarily through paper address lists, maps and questionnaires, resulting in high labor costs and numerous other challenges due to the magnitude of the labor-intensive data collection processes. For the 2010 Decennial Census, the Census Bureau will use automated systems, such as the wireless handheld computer, to directly capture information collected during interviews, reducing the need for paper-based processing while increasing operational efficiency, improving accuracy and reducing costs.

Harris is serving as the systems integrator as well as providing overall program management for the FDCA program which will fully integrate the multiple automated systems required to efficiently and securely obtain field census data for the 2010 census. At the peak of data collection operations during the 2010 census, it is anticipated that the FDCA system will support approximately 500 local offices and more than 500,000 enumerators.