Abstract: The US Census Bureau is one of the largest collectors of statistical information, through its censuses and sample surveys, in the United States. Traditional methods of data collection such as mail, telephone interview, and door-to-door enumeration are increasingly giving way to new innovative data collection techniques. Among these are Computer Assisted Telephone Interviewing (CATI), Computer Assisted Personal Interviewing (CAPI), electronic data exchange, and, most recently Internet-based data collection. Internet-based data collection may well be the data collection technique of the future. The Census Bureau experimented, quite successfully, with this technique in its 2000 Census of Population and Housing. At the present time, the IT organization is expanding the application of this technique to include its economic census and survey program at the request of project managers. Demographic statisticians have also expressed an interest in this data collection approach for demographic surveys. On the regulatory front, the Census Bureau is mandated by law to make web-based data collection an available alternative to more traditional data collection techniques. This article reviews the US Census Bureau's experience with web-based data collection in several of its economic and demographic surveys. It will address design and implementation techniques, component-based Internet data collection software, and our efforts to create a generic systems framework. The paper will also address a cadre of technical, privacy, security, and statistical issues as viewed by a large statistical agency with stringent confidentiality requirements.
