Staffware wins UK census e-document contract

Staffware, a document management company, is to fully automate the administrative processing for the forthcoming 2001 census.

The census takes place every ten years and attempts to record general information about every member of the UK population. Staffware's input means that for the first time all the data on the census returns will be fully computerised - at the time of the last census only 10 per cent of information made it onto computer records.

Staffware will automate processing for 625 million sheets of paper, 30 million 20-page forms, and another one million four-page forms for the principle systems provider Lockheed Martin.

Its software works by scan the census returns and automatically reading the data, so that answers do not have to be keyed in manually.