State Helps Improve Census Counts, Avoids $300,000 in Capital Costs With Cloud Services

Every 10 years, the Florida Legislature draws its district boundaries. The public is encouraged to participate, but previously had only a desktop application to submit recommendations for new district boundaries. For the 2010 census, the Florida House of Representatives wanted to develop a web-based application to allow even greater public participation, but the cost to build the infrastructure for the application was prohibitive. The Florida House of Representatives decided to implement the Windows Azure platform, including Microsoft SQL Azure, but first tested the technology with another project: My Florida Census, a website that helps residents report whether or not they've been counted by the U.S. Census.