Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Census 2010 press release

While I am still waiting for the data of last year's census, I found a small tidbit on the census at an unexpected location - a magazine on postal applications, which for whatever reason makes it into my work office. Browsing through it I stumbled on a short article - or probably more correct a press release - from Top Image Systems who were awarded contract with the National Statistics Office (NSO) to scan and process 38 million forms from the census.

To quote from the press release directly
The NSO was looking for a system that could rapidly process the large document quantities involved in the census without compromising accuracy. An intensive selection procedure was carried out, including proof of concept (POC) and benchmark testing; following the initial tender process, eFLOW was selected to take part in a pilot program that began in 2009.
[...]
Scanning will be carried out locally in 76 provinces throughout Thailand, with central processing taking place in Bangkok. Approximately 38 million documents will be processed by eFLOW during the census. In addition, the NSO will continue using eFLOW to process 8 million general survey forms a year.
I haven't heard much about the census anymore - on the website of NSO specifically on the 2010 census the latest news is from December 2009 - and apparently the data processing isn't done yet, even no preliminary on the website either. I cannot compare with the 2000 census, as when I first looked for data there it was already 2003/2004, but don't know when the data was actually made available online then. I just hope we don't have to wait till 2014 for the results of this census...

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