The challenge
The Australian Bureau of Statistics wanted to improve the accuracy and effectiveness of its Census data collection by deploying new technology that worked with existing systems. The solution
IBM provided the ABS with an advanced forms processing system, utilising Optical Character Recognition (OCR), to improve the quality and reduce the cost of data capture from millions of documents. The benefits
IBM's solution has led to improved quality and process efficiencies; fewer operators required to process forms and improved accuracy of data. It has also helped the ABS deliver the first Census publication to the Australian community one month ahead of schedule. The situation
The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) is a world leading statistical agency with an international reputation for providing a statistical service of quality and integrity. An Australian Government agency, the ABS's mission is to assist and encourage informed decision making research and discussion within the government and the community by providing a high quality objective and responsive statistical service. The statistical insight provided by the ABS is based on detailed research and analysis, which culminates in the Australian Census, a detailed national survey of the entire population of Australia that is conducted every five years. The Census is a massive exercise: For example, in August 2001, the ABS delivered more than nine million census forms to collect information related to the gender, age, occupations, families and many other items of the country's more than 19 million residents. The challenge
In 1998, the ABS decided to seek ways to automate aspects of its data collection process to improve quality and reduce costs. Before last year's Census, the process of collecting data from the millions of forms involved a heavy manual element. While Optical Mark Reading (OMR) technology was used to capture tick box data, this did not extend to Optical Character Recognition (OCR), which could capture hand-written information from forms, or capture form images for use by census applications. Manual capture of the hand-written information was not only time consuming, but also precluded implementation of advanced techniques such as the automatic coding of these responses. With collected returns increasing by approximately 10 per cent each Census, the previous method would simply have meant more OMR machines and more processing staff to complete the workload in the timeframe needed. The benefits
The ABS sought to deploy new technology to improve the accuracy and effectiveness of the overall Census business process, while carefully integrating it with existing applications. The ABS selected the IBM Intelligent Forms Processing Solution (IFP), IBM's most advanced forms processing system, which uses Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and other forms processing technologies to reduce the cost of data capture from documents. IFP allowed the ABS to introduce increased automatic processing of forms and the display of images of forms at the coder workstation, removing the need for the forms themselves to be examined for a large proportion of the processing steps. This innovation had led to improved quality and process efficiencies; fewer operators required to code and repair forms and improved accuracy of data. The development
After a competitive tender conducted in 1998/99, IBM was selected by a team of select ABS personnel from a number of key business areas, through the standard tender evaluation process. Key attractions were the performance of the tendered solution coupled with IBM's demonstrated capacity and expertise in managing complex and sensitive business change processes. This multi-million dollar three-year project, which commenced in April 1999, covered aspects such as application integration, overall environment and network integration, ABS automatic repair systems and solution sizing. The implementation project involved a partnership between IBM Global Services, IBM Global Services IFP Solutions Lab (US) and the ABS The solution
The IBM Solution comprised the Intelligent Forms Processing suite of applications for scanning forms processing, Kodak 9520 and 2500 scanners. IBM Global Services worked closely with the ABS to implement the solution. This involved integrating both IFP into the Census process and ABS applications into the IFP environment. Using the IBM solution, the ABS successfully completed the data capture phase of the 2001 Australian Census one month ahead of schedule. | 
