Israeli software to speed up Census process

Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India C Chandramouli,who was here on Friday,said this process was divided into two parts scanning and processing of data. The upgraded software has considerably cut down on the time that was taken for scanning. We are expecting similar results for processing too. The total time for scanning and processing data would be between one and two years instead of five years that were taken during the last Census, he added.

He said 98 per cent of the data could be processed by the image-based technology; only the remaining 2 per cent had to be entered manually. The mode of data capturing and processing has undergone tremendous change since 1961 when hand-punch was used. The time taken was eight to nine years. It was in 2001 that image-based automatic form processing technology and high speed duplex scanners were used for image-capturing. This brought the time down to five years. For this Census,the technology has been upgraded.