The 2010 Census Decennial Response Integration System (DRIS) Paper Questionnaire Data Capture operation were responsible for the capture and conversion of data from paper questionnaires that were mailed back by respondents, Be Counted and paper-based field operations, as well as paper questionnaire inputs from telephone-based questionnaire operations. The scope of this assessment report is primarily limited to paper questionnaires data captured by DRIS, but the report also includes some high level discussion of the data integration components of DRIS.  

For the 2010 Census, there were two contracted data capture centers. The contract centers were located in Phoenix, Arizona, and Baltimore, Maryland. In addition, the National Processing Center in Jeffersonville, Indiana served as a third data capture center, staffed by Federal government personnel.

Together, the three data capture centers processed and captured data from over 164 million paper questionnaires during the 2010 Census. The 164 million questionnaires contained over 3 billion individual checkbox fields. In addition to the 164 million questionnaires processed in calendar year 2010, for Group Quarters Validation operations in 2009, DRIS processed just over two million forms at the National Processing Center.

The decision to have a paper-based Nonresponse Followup census methodology added over 63.5 million enumerator paper questionnaires to the workload for data capture. These forms are included in the 164 million questionnaires figure above. The data capture centers handled the additional processing requirements successfully. Through change requests, this change to a paper-based Nonresponse Followup added over $161 million in contract value to the DRIS program. DRIS was designed with scalable cluster-based architecture. Had DRIS not used scalable architecture, this change could have cost much more to implement.

Because of capacity problems with the Paper Based Operations Control System, Census Bureau management made a decision to remove shipping functionality from The Paper Based Operations Control System. Local Census Offices were unable to ship materials for the first several days of Nonresponse Followup, and materials were accumulating in the Local Census Offices. The removal of shipping functionality from the Paper Based Operations Control System broke significant reconciliation features of DRIS. This resulted in additional staffing expense and end of program reconciliation costs, but DRIS was able to handle the system interface problems during operations. Overall, DRIS had more than fifty different interfaces (system data exchanges) with various Headquarters systems during peak production.

Overall, for mail return forms, the mail return workloads processed by DRIS were below initial projections due to contingency and changes to the replacement mailing strategy that were not in the initial workload estimates.

• The Paper data capture portion of the contract has estimated costs totaling $473,642,000, including paper operations costs of $248,714,000.
• The Workflow Control and Management (data integration) estimated costs totaled $23,749,000.

These numbers include the cost of paper data capture and the proportional cost of Project Management, Engineering, Architecture, Test, Data Quality, Security, Operation Management, contractor procured test materials, Telecommunications, Workflow Control and Management and Electronic Suitability Assessment (fingerprinting) costs. The cost of an individual segment cannot be used to represent the cost of a stand-alone paper questionnaire data capture contract. Cost savings were realized by integrating these segments into one contract. Taking the total paper form cost of $473,642,000 (this includes labor, systems, development), and dividing by the total number of paper forms processed by DRIS, yields an average data capture cost of approximately $2.94 per paper form processed through data capture in DRIS.

DRIS provided all contract deliverables in a timely manner. The DRIS program ended successfully, under budget, and on schedule. DRIS met all contractual requirements.