Cloud Computing and the U.S. Census

Slow and steady will hopefully win the race when it comes to the US Census Bureau and cloud computing. Instead of going all in, the Bureau is taking a slow-paced approach.

Off-site data storage or cloud computing is becoming more prevalent the past year or two as agencies, businesses, and organizations are utilizing this service to offset the cost of in-house storage. Instead of taking an "all in" approach, many business entities are stepping into the cloud gradually. A more patient and steady pace of adoption can mean the difference between ensuring customers have their data and suddenly finding that data irretrievably lost. One agency that is taking this cautious approach is the US Census Bureau. It was recently announced that the Bureau is tentatively using cloud computing technology for some of its data and information. The reasoning behind the usage of off-site storage is to lower costs and increase service delivery time to both employees and the general public. It takes ten years for the process of census taking to complete. The actual census itself takes mere months. At the moment, the US Census Bureau is hiring 1.4 million temporary workers, setting up over 500 offices, and contacting 170,000 partners to start the process. After this initial preparatory work is completed, 600 million census forms will be sent out by regular mail. Once the entire process has reached its conclusion, the Bureau will begin making budget cuts. To offset some of the punch of these budge cuts, the US Census Bureau implemented cloud computing to cut down on on-site data storage costs. Akamai is the main content delivery network for the customer web site for the 2010 census. Akamai is capable of handling major influxes in web traffic and will allow the Bureau web site peace of mind should an onslaught of visitors occur. The Bureau has also called upon Salesforce.com to help out with database needs. In what would normally take months, Salesforce.com was able to setup and deploy a customer database dealing with partner information within 6 weeks. As has been seen in the past, accidents can and will happen when proper data handling procedures are not adhered to. A perfect example is the data dump disaster that occurred with Sidekick mobile phone users and Danger cloud servers. The US Census Bureau is taking the sensible and reliable approach by not placing all of its proverbial eggs in one proverbial cloud basket.