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Census Paper Data Capture Quality
Decennial Response Integration System (DRIS) Paper Data Capture - Leveraging Automation, Ensuring Quality, and Containing Cost for the 2010 Census
Executive Summary
The U. S. Department of Commerce’s 2010 Decennial Census generated a massive volume of respondent-filled Census questionnaires. The Census Bureau’s Decennial Response Integrated System (DRIS) program was tasked with transforming every checkbox question and handwritten field on each paper form into a digital format that allowed for quick, accurate, and efficient tabulation.
The DRIS program developed and deployed innovative and highly automated technologies that resulted in exceeding data quality standards, vastly increased productivity, and significantly reduced cost. The use of automation enabled the real and near real time identification of small pockets of error during production. These errors were corrected as part of the normal quality processes, as defined in the DRIS Data Quality Management Plan (DQMP) which specified Service Level Agreements on data quality outcomes.
The DRIS program accurately captured complex data for over 165 million census forms employing high-speed color image processing and data capture technology. They developed and applied numerous tools to measure and ensure data quality, and achieved a very high accuracy rate. The DRIS team performed this task within a short six month timeframe, and finished operations under budget.
