Background
The American Community Survey (ACS) is one of the most important data collection efforts administered by the United States Census Bureau, providing comprehensive demographic, social, economic, and housing data on a yearly basis. With responses from more than 3.5 million households annually, the ACS helps inform over $675 billion in federal and state fund allocations and supports decision-making across government, academia, journalism, and business sectors. To maintain the high quality, accuracy, and accessibility of these data products, the Census Bureau relies on a complex ecosystem of data processing and tabulation systems. OPTiMO was contracted to provide comprehensive support for the ACS-Decennial Tabulation System, a mission-critical platform responsible for producing 60,000+ standard and custom statistical tables annually, while ensuring data security, compliance, and public dissemination through platforms like data.census.gov.
The Challenge
Given the scale and sensitivity of the ACS data, the Census Bureau faced a number of key operational and technical challenges:
- Provide technical support to the DITD for the ACS respondent data processing from the data collection years 2023, 2024, 2025, and 2026 leading into 2027.
- Developing and reviewing specifications, performing tests, producing data, and verifying data to make sure the products meet the disclosure avoidance and customer requirements.
- Follow and apply Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) and Agile Programming practices, including reuse of existing in-house software to the extent possible.
- Develop test data based on existing and/or synthetic data sets as appropriate for Computer Assisted Person Interview (CAPI), Telephone Questionnaire Assistance (TQA), Failed Edit Follow-up (FEFU), Internet, and Mail. Including anonymizing Title 13 and Personal Identifiable Information (PII), as required.
- Supporting an increasing number of custom tabulation requests, often requiring specialized programming and disclosure avoidance procedures
- Meeting the strict data confidentiality mandates under Title 13, requiring rigorous testing, validation, and disclosure control measures across all deliverables
- Lead Census’ transition to open source development tools.
The Census Bureau needed a trusted partner with deep technical knowledge, government data security experience, and the ability to deliver with both speed and accuracy.
The Solution
OPTiMO provided full lifecycle technical operations and maintenance for the ACS-Decennial Tabulation System, enabling the Census Bureau to uphold its high standards for quality, compliance, and reliability. Key components of our solution included:
- Maintained and optimized multiple critical components of the data processing system to ensure efficient performance across complex workflows and large-scale data inputs
- Utilized automated scripting techniques to manage data processing tasks, validate large datasets, and generate outputs for both internal operations and public release
- Provide best in class architecture and modernization planning support by bringing best practices and capabilities from OPTiMO’s extensive experience solving this exact problem across multiple gov’t agencies and cloud platforms.
- Construction and supporting the execution of a transformation roadmap which enables Census to support hybrid technology environment undergoing modernization, including cloud migration, IT adoption of open-source tools, and DevSecOps implementation.
- Build and modify scripts in Perl/Korn shell and SAS programs, using IBM/Cisco servers running Linux, within the framework of the ACS tabulation system to produce the ACS 1-year and 5-year data products using the edited and weighted microdata.
- Providing overall support and maintenance of the ACS-Decennial Tabulation System and assist the Government in producing produce ACS data products. The ACS Tabulation System consists of several sub-systems to generate various ACS data products, including specifications in spreadsheet form, parameter files, and geographic information to produce the tables for the ACS.
Hybrid Agile and SDLC-Aligned Practices
- Employed iterative development techniques in line with Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) best practices
- Leveraged AI agents to identify and track contract requirements, defects, and test cases systematically, with clear mappings from contract requirements through to functional outputs and an agreed upon definition of done.
The Impact
OPTiMO’s support for the Survey Tabulation System directly contributed to the timely, secure, and accurate delivery of trusted data used by decision-makers across the country. The results include:
- Delivery of 60,000+ statistical tables annually that drive national decision-making in government, research, and economic development
- Support for 3.5 million household records processed each year, reinforcing data integrity and continuity for one of the largest continuous surveys in the U.S
- Improved system performance and reliability, ensuring high availability during critical release cycles
- Seamless cloud migration that future-proofed operations while maintaining backward compatibility with legacy tabulation scripts
- Enabled the Census Bureau to uphold its Title 13 confidentiality mandate through rigorous validation, testing, and compliance frameworks
- Reduction of system downtime and faster anomaly resolution through automated metric tracking and streamlined validation checks
By combining technical expertise, stringent quality assurance, and deep understanding of federal data policy, OPTiMO has played a vital role in helping the Census Bureau to transform the fundamental technology stack and capability while maintaining public trust and delivering data that shapes the future of American communities.