This grant will address an important problem area for the US Bureau of the Census, and through them, the various Federal agencies who commission the Bureau to conduct statistical survey, i.e., the specification and creation of complex survey instruments. At present Census is using a very old proprietary system which occupies nearly 100 Census staff. The PI will use commercially-available software as an infrastructure upon which will be created a research prototype of a modern Web/relational database system, using modern software engineering techniques, to allow graphically-specific surveys with built-in error-checking and administration.
