Census Bureau officials have awarded a five-year contract worth nearly $600 million to Harris to support the 2010 Decennial Census. The contract revolves around the use of mobile computers in the field to collect data.

Under the deal, Melbourne, Fla.-based Harris will lead a team providing information technology infrastructure, hardware, software and services to support nearly 500 local bureau offices nationwide. The company's efforts will support the 500,000 or so handheld devices that are expected to be used as part of the Field Data Collection Automation program.

Through the program, the bureau wants to automate the collection of field data and its delivery to information systems in near real time.

“We are revolutionizing the Census,” the bureau’s director, Louis Kincannon, said in a prepared statement.

Harris will serve as systems integrator and provide overall program management. On its team are:

• Accenture, which will provide mobile computing applications and enterprise support systems.


• Dell, which will provide office computing equipment.


• High Tech Computer, which will also supply mobile computing equipment.


• Unisys, which will provide nationwide support and service for the field offices.


• Sprint, which will provide telecommunications services.


• Oracle, which will provide database support.


• Client Network Services Inc., which will provide engineering and field technical support.


• Headstrong, which will support the enterprise architecture development for the decennial census.

In 2002, the bureau awarded Harris an eight-year, $210 million contract to integrate the bureau’s Master Address File and Topologically Integrated Geographic Encoding and Referencing databases as part of the a project to improve the accuracy of the data.