Groundbreaking efforts in Florida to ensure everyone counts

The Florida House of Representatives has done some fantastic new work to ensure the accuracy and thoroughness of the U.S. 2010 Census. On April 12, 2010 the House launched MyFloridaCensus.gov, a website aimed at allowing the citizen populous to inform the House if they were not included in the 2010 Census, which ends its door-to-door counting on July 10.

Each person counted during the census can mean as much as $1,500 per year in federal funding, and increased representation in Congress. Likewise, for every person missed there are ten years of dollars and opportunities left on the table. Funding for schools, emergency services, hospitals, senior services, and childcare services are directly impacted by the accuracy of the census.

Built with Visual Studio 2010, the site makes use of Windows Azure, SQL Azure, Silverlight, and Bing Maps. It allows state residents to both provide feedback and then visually interact with data in their state, county and neighborhoods. Most importantly, MyFloridaCensus.gov allows the House to locate areas potentially uncounted by the US 2010 Census.

The Azure platform allowed the state to realize a cost-effective solution which leveraged their in-house skills and will allow them to scale the application dynamically. This is a great example of how State governments can leverage the cloud for mission critical yet collapsible solution scenarios. You can read more about the initiative here and read an opinion piece in the Miami Herald here.

We’ve got lots of information in the works discussing the solution in more detail so stay tuned! Congratulations Florida on a job well done!!

-Pat Weikle