January 9, 2003

Electronic Filing of 2002 Economic Census is Now Widely Offered by Census Bureau, through Software Designed by Fenestra

GERMANTOWN, Md -- Today the Census Bureau launched the Generalized Instrument Design System (GIDS), the software planned and built by Fenestra Technologies, for the 2002 Economic Census.

GIDS creates, captures, shares and publishes highly complex paper and electronic forms and responses that millions of businesses must complete by February 12, 2003.

The Commerce Department’s Census Bureau has announced that most of the 5 million businesses that received 2002 Economic Census forms in December can – for the first time – file their information electronically. By using identifiers on the form, businesses can download either a questionnaire program or a spreadsheet template, complete it on their own computer – importing data form company records directly into the questionnaire – and file the form on a secure Internet site.

“Substantial layout flexibility and high typographic quality were critical elements for both paper and electronic forms,” says Rick Rogers, CEO. “In addition, Extensible Markup Language (XML) languages were used to facilitate information sharing and reuse. GIDS is a robust e-government tool for Census, its respondents and data users.”

Fenestra will be providing additional services for Census, due to its recent R&D 2007 IDIQ award in Survey Engineering.

About Fenestra Technologies: Fenestra researches, designs and deploys practical and turnkey solutions for highly complex content problems. Using a "triage" approach, the firm deepens feature sets and accelerates faster implementation cycles.

Core competencies include forms creation and processing, data collection and validation, complex typography formatting, and the creation of dynamic, scalable and flexible data management solutions for both electronic and paper purposes.

The U.S. Census Bureau continues to partner with Fenestra (since the early ‘90’s), and companies including IBM, ExxonMobil, and Advanced Productivity Software have also retained the firm for specialty expertise.

Contact:
Fenestra Technologies Corporation
Jane O. Smith, 301/916-8800 x 206
jane@fenestra.com