2004 Handheld Software: Assignment Management

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2004 Handheld Software Assignment Management
Short Form Questionnaire

• Jean Sebold
• Decennial Development Team Leader
• Technologies Management Office
• Feb. 28, 2005

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Introduction

• Overview of Handheld Computer (HHC) System used
  in the 2004 test
• Assignment Management System
• functionality
• Challenges
• Lessons learned
• Short Form Questionnaire
• functionality
• Challenges
• Lessons learned
• Q A

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Census 2004 NRFU Test

• - 1000 enumerators
• - 2 sites 1 urban/ 1 rural
• - test started April 2004 and ended July 2004
• Goals included
• Automating the Non-response Follow-up (NRFU)
  questionnaire in both English and Spanish
• Developing an Assignment Management System (AMS)
  to manage the enumerator workload
• Transmitting data to/from the device via a 56K
  modem
• Allowing the user to capture GPS coordinates
• Displaying TIGER map files using a COTS product,
  ArcPad
• Encrypting Census data on the HHC
• ALL ON A HAND-HELD COMPUTER!!

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2004 Test Telecommunications/Data Transmission
Infrastructure
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Development Environment

• - Visual Studio .NET
• - C Programming Language
• AMS
• NRFU Questionnaire
• - SQL Server CE
• Shared DB among AMS NRFU Inst
• - XML
• All transmitted files were in XML format

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What is the Assignment Management System (AMS)?

• A Control System that is on the Handheld Device
  and used by enumerators to access and manage
  their assigned workload.
• Contains a Quality Control component as well as a
  Training application/DB that can be refreshed
  as needed

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2004 Functionality of AMS

• Provides the capability to store and display an
  enumerators workload
• Provides the ability to add/remove cases from the
  enumerators workload
• Displays case status codes
• Ability to access the Address Reference list
• Provides workload counts (ex. Interviewed, not
  started, transmitted, etc)
• Displays mail messages sent from the offices
• Provides sort, search filter capability

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2004 Functionality of AMS Contd

• Provide the capability to invoke the
  questionnaire for each case
• Ability to collect GPS for each structure
  containing a living quarter
• Ability to add living quarters not identified in
  the enumerators assignment area
• Allows Data entry (notes, contact info.) for each
  case
• Provides the ability to restart a case
• Allow the enumerator to perform either a preset
  or immediate transmission

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2004 HHC Transmission process

• - Enumerator plugs in modem initiates a dial-up
  transmission selects either immediate or preset
• - An xml file is created that includes completed
  work to be sent to the HQ control system
• - The device dials authenticates to the
  telecommunications system
• - The completed work is uploaded to the control
  system
• - Any software updates are sent to the device
• - Any new assignments or cases that need to be
  removed are downloaded to the device
• - The device disconnects from the server
• - Software updates are applied
• - New assignments, mail messages, and adjustments
  to the workload are made
• - Cases that have been transmitted are marked as
  transmitted and an entry is made to the
  transmission log

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2004 Challenges for AMS

• 1. Address Reference List a complete list of
  all addresses surnames in an area including HUs
  that have mailed the questionnaire- used in
  apartment mixups adding HUs
• Challenges
• - If an enumerator is assigned cases from
  multiple areas (language specialist), they would
  receive all addresses for all areas assigned
• - The surnames need to be updated as Late
  Questionnaires are received in the Data capture
  center
• 2. Lack of Institutional Experience in the HHC
  Environment

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2004 Lessons Learned for AMS

• 1. Transmission application
• Problems
• -Too many steps (23 steps) the process is too
  complex
• -Not enough messaging
• -Too many moving parts
• Plan for 2006
• -Make transmission application stand alone from
  Start menu more user friendly not as many
  steps
• -added a more robust messaging system that
  displays more meaningful messages to the user

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2004 Lessons Learned for AMS

• 2. Crew Leader (CL) Management
• Problem
• CL needed some automated tools to manage their
  crew from the field
• Plan for 2006
• Add a CL assignment management system that will
  allow the CL to perform the following
• - Access reports of enumerators within their crew
• - Allow CL to make assignments/reassignments from
  the HHC
• - Allow the CL to review/accept/reject work of
  their crew before the cases are sent to the
  operational control system (OCS)

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2004 Lessons Learned for AMS

• 3. of cases on HHC
• Problem
• Cases remained on the enumerators HHC for the
  life of the operation
• Plan for 2006
• Cases will be removed from the HHC after a
  confirmation is received that the case was
  received in HQ processing without errors.

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What is the Short Form Questionnaire?

• The automated questionnaire used by enumerators
  to collect census data in the Non-Response
  Follow-Up (NRFU) operation.
• Also referred to as the instrument
• Contains a Quality Control component

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2004 Short Form Functionality

• - Provides the ability to toggle from English to
  Spanish at any point within the questionnaire
• - Structured as a person-based questionnaire
• - Allows enumerator to add/delete people to the
  HH roster
• - Provides some basic edits (ex. Age/DOB)
• - Assigns each case with a status code. The
  enumerator is not allowed to set the status
  codes the questionnaire assigns the code based
  on the provided responses
• - Allows the enumerator to access/add to the
  shared case notes
• - Collects additional information that is used
  for evaluation purposes. (Ex attempt history)

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Questionnaire Challenges

• - Screen size (2 x 3)
• - Consistent look feel
• - Usability no scrolling, limited use of the
  virtual keyboard
• - Lack of experience developing for a HHC
• - No industry standard questionnaire development
  tools (ie, Cases, Blaise)

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Questionnaire Form Design
Title Bar
Text Panel
Custom Controls
Response Pane
Command Bar
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Controls used for Usability

• 1. Tagged text into 5 categories
• - normal text
• - spoken bold
• - parenthetical gray
• - Action blue italic
• - instruction underlined
• 2. Hidden Dont Know/ Refused
• - used the context menu function
• - available on every screen and grayed out when
  not required for a screen

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Controls used for Usability (contd)

• 3. More button
• - Used on the text/response panes when the text
  does not fit on the screen
• - The button grays out when it is the last screen
• - A More left/right button appear when the
  user advances to the next screen
• 4. Hyperlink
• - Used for responses that have sub-categories
• - Click on the blue arrow to display the sub
  categories
• 5. Number control
• - Customized to limit the number selection
  depending on the data being entered. Ex.restricts
  from entering February 31st

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Lesson Learned

• - not to underestimate the level of effort
  involved in developing the Questionnaire!

Spec
Automated Spec
Paper Questionnaire
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Additional Functionality for 2006

• - Automated Address Canvassing operation
• - Crew Leader Functionality
• - Automated payroll application
• - Provide a topic-based questionnaire

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Q A???