Census takes a walk on the cloud

April 1 marks National Census Day, the deadline for people residing in the United States to mail in their completed decennial census forms. As critics predict that the Census Bureau's IT systems will experience a great deal of stress this month, it is looking to cloud computing for help.

While the bureau taps into cloud services for its 2010 decennial count, it also is building up its own cloud infrastructure for the 2020 census, said Chief Information Officer Brian McGrath in an interview with Nextgov.

Cloud computing allows databases, Web sites and systems to be hosted through the Internet -- or the cloud -- reducing the costs of procuring and maintaining server hardware. The cloud is a paradigm shift from centralized computing systems that run on mainframes to what experts describe as a virtualized and abstract framework.

The bureau currently is leasing capacity and bandwidth from a public cloud provider to support 2010.census.gov, which is media-rich with interactive applications and videos and uses a cloud software-as-a-service to manage its 200,000 partnerships with nonprofits, federal agencies and corporations that have been encouraging people to mail in their census forms.

But having a cloud of its own would give the Census Bureau's information managers more control over data security; although they would have to build and oversee most of the system. Because of the "sensitive nature" of the bureau's data, a private cloud presents "the best value and the most secure solution for our organization at this time," McGrath said.

A Windows virtualization effort that entailed layering multiple systems on server hardware, which reduced the amount of hardware needed for purchase, created the first piece of the private cloud in 2009.

The bureau has saved $2.5 million in the early stages of establishing its own cloud and its IT systems have become more responsive, McGrath said. For instance, Census set up a correspondence tracking system in less than a week because it didn't have to procure additional hardware.

The next phase of growing the cloud involves the virtualization of its Linux system, which is twice the size of the Windows footprint. The bureau most likely will begin moving its Linux system to the cloud this year if an ongoing cost-benefit analysis proves favorable.

In January, the bureau reached out to industry players for information on investments it might need to make as it builds its cloud. McGrath said the request for information Census released received 17 responses from small firms to Fortune 500 companies. The next step is to use the information to draft a request for proposal.

Virtualization, the first step to cloud computing, is not "bleeding edge," but it's certainly "state-of-the-market," he added.