Multimedia Victoria - US Census deal puts Victorian Company on the Map

US Census deal puts Victorian company on the map


Monday 15 June 2009

A Victorian based company has won a major role in the $600 million, five year program to digitalize data collection for the US Government during their upcoming national census.

Maptel, a Melbourne based company that specialises in mobile mapping, won the lucrative contract due to a unique software program that they have developed called ArcPad.

ArcPad integrates geographic information and global positioning technology so that field operators can gather, process and deliver information in near real time through small handheld computers to central computing systems.

The software is being used in the current US Census and is also a key component of the US Census Bureau’s Field data Collection Automation Program which aims to digitize all of the Bureaus data collection work.

During the Census, a taskforce numbering 140,000 data collectors will be used to collect information from residents across America. Their job will be to verify and update the addresses and confirm the GPS coordinates of America’s 145 million households. Since the last national count in 2000, an estimated eight million new addresses have to be identified and recorded.

In total, more than 155,000 copies of ArcPad software will be used in the census data collection program.

When asked about the project Maptel’s managing director, Elvin Slavik said: “This project shows that even small companies like ours can break into the international market and earn not only major income for us, but also become significant export earners for Australia.”