1. Census Enterprise Dissemination Overview and Update
November, 2016

2. Table of Contents Introduction Transition to Census.gov Live Demo
Next Steps

3. What is CEDSCI?
CEDSCI stands for the Center for Enterprise Dissemination Services and Consumer Innovation
CEDSCI is looking to centralize and standardize the data, metadata, and software needed to build dissemination tools and provide easy access to all Census Bureau public use content to improve the users’ experience. 
Why? - Right now we have several different data dissemination tools.  AFF, Quick Facts, Easy Stats, DataFerrett, the Census API and many others.  These are all systems with their own data and metadata databases.  They use their own infrastructure, own software, and the duplication exists in many of these systems. Taking a customer focused approach to dissemination.
What is CEDSCI:
CEDSCI stands for the Center for Enterprise Dissemination Services and Consumer Innovation
BRIEF HISTORY: In about 2013 the Census Bureau put together a task force to review how well we were putting our data into the hands of our customers – and how they were using it – to better understand if the current is working and, if not, what needed to be changed.
That task force found a disparate set of dissemination tools across the Bureau, somewhere in the range – tools like American Fact Finder; Easy Stats; Data Ferret, the Census Data API, and many, many others.
Each directorate within the Bureau has created a different path for their individual customers to access their unique, and as a result dissemination happens many different ways, using many different tools and services
It’s not centralized or standardized, and each directorate has it’s own dissemination path and silo’d operation
The Task Force made a recommendation that the Bureau should take a standardized, centralized approach to dissemination, to include data, metadata, dissemination software, services and tools
By doing so, we would be able to create a “single user experience” for all our customers and a simple, yet effective way to access data by just coming to the Census.gov website instead of accessing one of dozens of different tools to access different data
The Task Force then developed a Concept of Operations to help move the Bureau into this direction and the CEDSCI program office was stood up to begin executing this CONOPS

4. What is CEDSCI? Front-End Back-End Dissemination Services and Tools
Casual User at Census.gov
Dissemination Services and Tools
Sophisticated User
Geo Services
Table Services
Expert User
Visualizations
There are three components of a centralized dissemination approach that the CEDSCI team is working on, going from right to left and starting with the front end:
BACK-END (Technology/Infrastructure and Support): Dissemination Services
Every directorate that disseminates data uses a combination of these three capabiltiies: geography services; table services; and visualization services.
But right now, if you go to the website, there’s about 5 or 6 mapping tools for different types of data: e.g., LEHD has one kind of map; census.gov has some different maps for 2010 data; AFF has it’s own map; Business Builder has another mapping tool there. All the maps look and behave differently, and have different data sets in them, and actually run off of different infrastructure.
This isn’t just true for mapping – same for visualization and table services as well. Each business unit comes up with it’s own idea and geography, table and visualization services for its data, and then they build it and maintain it in a siloed manner
As a result, you have all these different tools that each look and operate a little differently from the user’s perspective
This is one of the area’s where CEDSCI will be working to help centralize and standardize the user experience
BACK-END CONT’D (Metadata/Data Repository): This is also similarly true for meta-data and the data repository
For each one of those mapping, table or visualization tools the data that feeds into them is replicated each for each tool – so there isn’t a single feed of data and meta-data serving multiple tools and services
For example, there are ACS datasets that are reflected in the Census API; and then copied and reflected in American Fact Finder; and then again in Quick Facts. This is true for a lot of data sets
Each copy of the data is stored in a different place, requiring it’s own review and validation, and - when updates are needed – each copy needs to be updated or corrected and reviewed again individually
Clearly this isn’t an efficient or effective way to process data: Even if we just brought all the data and metadata under one roof, brought them together into a central repository, and then built our apps off of it, that would be a major improvement.
But we wanted to look at it not only from the data and the back end from where we store it, but also from the front end. These are the two main components of what we need to build for CEDSCI.
FRONT-END (User Experience and User Interface): Now, the “user experience” column the left-most side of this slide is where our external users and customers they would see the change in how the Bureau disseminates data
The first example of this is that casual user in Census.gov. This is what I’ll be showing you during our live demo – a first look at what we’re doing to consolidate all the data in all these different systems and technologies into a single, seamless user experience
This is really the focus of CEDSCi: to look at dissemination from the customer perspective, and learn how they use the data..understand what data sets people are accessing; what search terms they’re using; are some maps getting more use than others? Are some tables just never being searched for and accessed?
We can work with our partner offices within the Bureau, like our Customer Experience Management Office, and take these insights and innovate to improve the customer experience – with new maps, data-sets, visualizations, etc.
The bottom line is that all this user experience feedback helps us build better front-and and back-end services, and keeps the user experience at the forefront of our minds so that we’re constantly innovating and improving – but we can’t get there without all the back-end infrastructure, services data and metadata built, centralized and standardized
User Experience and
User Interface
Metadata & Data Repository
Technology Infrastructure and Support
CEDSCI Initial Release

5. CEDSCI Goals & Benefits
Transform and expand the dissemination of Census content to seize the digital opportunity and better serve our internal and external customers to:
Enable a customer-centric and innovative dissemination environment
Increase visibility and utility of Census data
Operate as an efficient enterprise program
Improve Customer Satisfaction
Personalized Experience
Public Perception
The U.S. Census has an opportunity to drive a personalized customer experience, providing customers with access to improved web features, self-service data capabilities, and omni-channel integration.
Public opinion and perceived value of the Census Bureau is directly tied to customer experience. An enhanced experience would benefit public perception.
The CEDCSI program allows for increased customer satisfaction through standardizing and normalizing Census content.
Grow our Audience
Building an enhanced digital platform will better serve the American people to help grow the Census audience.
Here are just a few of the goals and benefits of CEDSCI:
First and foremost, CEDSCI helps us put our customers at the center of everything we do, by creating a clean, standardized user experience that makes sense and doesn’t require in-depth knowledge of our data architecture, and that allows us to collect insights on how our customers are using data so that we can make ongoing improvements and innovations to a centralized, standardized platform.
Which gets to our second benefit: we want to respond to customer feedback quickly, and make changes that will make a meaningful impact
We want to increase visibility and utility of data. One example I often give is, if I need to go and find a tax form and go to the IRS website, they don’t send me to another tool to search and navigate. The search is integrated with IRS.gov – many government websites work this way – anything that they offer is accessible through the website. Right now the bureau makes you pick different tools – AFF, LEHD, Fact Finder – and it’s very confusing for the public. They come to Census.gov and they should be able to get their answers right there. So again, our goal is to increase the visibility and use of our data so that the public – from casual to our expert users – can use these data to better our nation
Ultimately, we want to improve our customer satisfaction – responding to their feedback and requests based on what we find in the CEM and monitoring. So our goal is not just a better experience, more visible and useable data, and a more innovative platform, but we believe all of that rolls up into better customer satisfaction
Looking down the road, we want to create a personalized experience for our customers: This is one of the Tenets of digital transformation of Census.gov. We can not only learn a lot by asking our customers to create user profiles for Census.gov – not only about the data they’re looking for but the ways they’re accessing the data – but we can also provide better service. With a more centralized and standardized dissemination architecture, we can push data, reports, press releases and other content based on our user’s past usage or subscriptions. We have a really incredible opportunity not just to centralize and standardize, but flip the way data dissemination is currently being done on its head and make major strides in innovation and user experience
There’s also a public perception component of all this: Census data is needed by businesses, governments and communities to make decisions. Dissemination puts that data in their hands. Dissemination adds value to the census bureau by making data collection easier and providing better results. Better dissemination means our customers and data users will see the value of our data – when we see our data in more and more common places (Trulia; Zillow; etc.). Anytime there is brand recognition that is there, it gives us a better foundation to collect better data too. People become more comfortable with us.
There is also an internal cost reduction benefit – As we standardize across systems, we can improve the efficiency of how we clear the data; much more efficient for our IT costs within the building to have data stored in one place vs. multiple places
Growing our audience is another benefit – with an enterprise dissemination capability we can tell better stories across all our data sets about neighborhoods and cities. Right now we can only tell a story about the demographics or the business. The more our data is integrated, the better insights people will be able to receive.
Reduce IT Costs
Strategic Planning
The consolidation of data dissemination systems, processes, and tools saves costs by eliminating duplicate systems and processes while using existing tools better and by making the workplace more efficient and effective.
A unified, analytics- driven, actionable and highly understandable model that provides a single consumer-centric planning framework. Supports more effective strategic decision-making
gather customer insights, develop analytics, and drive behavior.
Efficient Operations
A shared service operating model for enterprise-wide dissemination provides operational efficiencies.

6. CEDSCI’s Iterative Approach
CEDSCI is being developed in an iterative process with stakeholder feedback driving continuous improvements along the way
Continuous Integration of Stakeholder Feedback
Alpha Phase4
Tech Preview Phase 1
Tech Preview Phase 2
Tech Preview Phase 3
Tech Preview Phase 4
Release 1
And here’s a little bit about the AGILE approach we’re using to develop CEDSCI:
We started at the end of last year in a development cycle, and we released our first alpha phase – in total we’ve gone through 4 alpha phases, and a few proof of concepts before that.
We invited a small group of stakeholders to take part in the Alpha releases and provide feedback: state data centers, census information centers, data dissemination staff; kept to the people that use our data all the time and would be seriously impacted. We wanted them to have an early look
The goal was to bring people in as early as possible to help shape this thing
We released Alpha 4 in the middle of Sept and will release first phase of our Technical Preview at the end on Oct 3 – this first Technical Preview will have limited functionality and data sets
Every 90 days we release a piece of code and hopefully a few more data sets and geographies. We’ll increment these releases working with state data centers, census information centers, and DDS staff to gather their feedback since they’re such a key stakeholder – but they also represent so many of our external stakeholders, because they train on a daily basis – meeting with novice and expert users.
They bring a broad perspective and can speak for a wide range of customers and be a good source of feedback. They can tell us, “hey listen no one understands this tool”– or “this takes me forever to explain”.
While Alpha was open to only a few stakeholders, our Technical Preview phase will be open to everyone, again in the spirit of wanting folks to test it out and tell us what works, what doesn’t, etc.
We’ll be able to do a lot more usability testing during this phase, maybe even push mobile useability testing to the website to where we can collect user feedback and do studies on the website
Right now we are scheduled for our first major release in June of 2017 but a few internal and external group shave recommended that date be pushed back into 2018 so we can have more time to get the infrastructure right and our stakeholders can have more time to provide feedback and get accustomed to this new way of finding data.
Sept 2016
Sept 2016
Jan 2017
Apr 2017
Jun 2017
Jun 2017
*CEDSCI’s technical preview phases are only intended for beta-testing and not intended for official use. For official U.S. statistics during this time, please use current Census.gov tools.

7. Table of Contents Introduction Transition to Census.gov Live Demo
Next Steps

8. Transition to Census.gov Dissemination
Our approach for the transition will occur in phases to minimize operational risk while maximizing our ability to leverage existing services, processes, and investments in the new CEDSCI platform.
Plan and Align
Establish Prototype
Refine Platform
Complete Transition 1 2 3 4
Define the transition strategy to position it for success
Define a future state vision; identify process changes associated with the transition and evaluate program area impacts
Deploy modernized data dissemination platform in parallel to existing operations to mitigate risk and minimize change; engage stakeholders and collect customer feedback
Retire legacy systems; continuous improvements to the modernized data dissemination platform
Proof of Concept 2 Completed – Aug 2015
And here’s just another quick level of detail on the phases of transition:
We have completed the first 2 phases. The Plan and Align and Establish a Prototype. Since the end of November we have been working on building and refining the Dissemination Platform. We started collecting feedback from you, but we have also started to really start digging into all the complexity of centralizing all the data into a single platform. This is the phase where Data Transition actually begins. We start bringing more datasets over into the new repository. I really should redraw this slide and extend this time out a little longer and blend Phases 3 and 4. This process of migrating all the data and ensuring there is the functionality to support all the data and building a quality data access tool will take some time. We are creating a process for identifying each of the datasets and dissemination tools, and then creating a plan for migrating each one into this new dissemination model. We will continue this process into phase 4, Complete Transition. This will take the most time. We will continue to have our current dissemination tools up and running as we migrate to this new platform.
Plan and align the transition – created prototypes, work on platform, and then move data over to complete the transition. Lots of work to be done over the next year – most aff data should be transitioned by next year. CEDSCI system on the back end will take a little time. Migrating the data is one thing, but then building the functionality and improving on it will take a little longer.
Create the prototypes;
Refine the platform
Complete the transition.
Ongoing releases to incorporate continuous customer feedback
Proof of Concept 1 Completed – 2014
Alpha Release - November 2015
Technical Preview Release - September 2016
Release 1 -
June 2017

9. Table of Contents Introduction Transition to Census.gov Live Demo
Next Steps
Now we can shift gears and jump into a Demo. I’m Demoing from our development environment today, so this is not really accessible to you yet. One thing I do want to point out is that the Technical Preview is seperated from the main Census.gov page. We did this in an effort to reduce confusion to our customers who discover the Tech Preview accidently. We don’t want someone trying to find something on Census.gov to be confused with our Technology Preview. We are not fully integrated with Census.gov yet. So when we share a link with you, you will not be able to navigate to it from Census.gov.

10. Data in Technical Preview
*CEDSCI’s technical preview is only intended for beta-testing and not intended for official use. For official U.S. statistics, please use current Census.gov tools.
 Datasets
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
ACS 1-Year Summary Files & Data Profile Tables 
ACS 3-Year Summary Files & Data Profile Tables
ACS 5-Year Summary Files
ACS 5-Year Data Profile Tables
County Business Patterns
Non Employer Statistics
EWKS
Decennial SF1
Survey for Business Owners
As a reminder, before we get into this Live Demo, we need to remember that only a limited amount of data will be available in this initial technical preview.
This table shows which data will be accessible in this initial release. You can see we some ACS data, the 2010 SF1 and a couple of Econ datasets. We also have limited product types. For example, only ACS Detailed Tables and Profiles are available. You will not find any GCTs or Subject Tables. We also still have a limited number of Summary levels. We are continuing to work on migrating more data. Let’s look at the Demo.

11. Table of Contents Introduction Transition to Census.gov
Features & Data
Next Steps

12. Technical Preview
Census will release a series of Technical Previews beginning in Sept. 2016
Remember, these technical previews are a very early look into the new system
We will send out the link when the Technical Preview is live and welcome your feedback
Please share the link with your colleagues -- the more feedback we get the better
We will make this webinar and the materials available for you to use. I know I have had several people ask me when they can start sharing information on the CEDSCI Program and the future of Census Dissemination. The time is now. Here is our final slide to wrap us up. The Technical Preview is scheduled to be released September Remember, there are a series of these Technical Previews coming. These are an early look into our development process. Tell us what you think. Share the vision and invite others to tell us what they think.
Thanks You…

13. APPENDIX   
   

14. Send Feedback About Your CEDSCI Experience
Your feedback will be used to:
Implement changes to current features
Guide the development process and prioritize upcoming tasks
Means by which your feedback will be collected:
Conference calls
Feedback Button
Usability
Focus Groups
Send Feedback About Your CEDSCI Experience

15. Explore Data Leveraging Various Facets
CEDSCI Beta Features
Explore Data Leveraging Various Facets
Search by Topics
Search by Location
Search by NAICS Codes
Search by Year
Search by Dataset
Get table results that match selected facets
Search by Program Areas

16. CEDSCI Beta Features
Type Ahead feature available within Topics, Locations and NAICS selection to quickly find and select desired facets

17. Use Map as a tool to select desired geographies to search for data
CEDSCI Beta Features
Supported
Geographies
State
County
Place within State
Economic Places
Metro/Micro Areas
Census Tracts
Block Groups
Use Map as a tool to select desired geographies to search for data
Various Selector Tools to simplify selection of large number of geographies
Supported Years
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014

18. CEDSCI Beta Features
Use More Geographies to select additional geographies and summary levels
Search by Region
Type Ahead feature available to quickly find and select desired geographies
Search by Counties
Search by Congressional Districts
Search by School Districts

19. CEDSCI Beta Features
Results Page – Matching table results to selected facets organized by Table ID.
Geography Information Panel
[Available for a single Geography and selected Topics]
Your current selection
Select additional facets to further refine search results
Census Web Results
[Other Census Data Related to Your Search Criteria]
Table Results matching the search criteria
Geography Information Panel
[Available for a single Geography]

20. CEDSCI Beta Features
Table Viewer Feature – Ability to Preview Tables Directly From the Results Page
Table results grouped by datasets to reduce duplicate table entries
Click on the “Table Title” or “Open As” to launch the Full Table View
Download desired tables in “csv” format directly from the the results page
Preview desired tables side by side

21. Full Table View – Further review data in Full Table View mode.
CEDSCI Beta Features
Download Data in “csv” format
Full Table View – Further review data in Full Table View mode.
Ability to turn Margin of Error On / Off
Modify Geography Directly From the Full Table View
View a Thematic Map of Data
Transpose Data
View/Hide Table Notes

22. CEDSCI Beta Geographies
CEDSCI Supported Geography Summary Levels for Beta Release