CI:Now previewed its forthcoming ACS Tool at the Association of Public Data Users Annual Conference held July 17-18. The ACS Tool makes it much easier and faster to process data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, a critical source of information on local demographics, income and poverty, household and family composition, housing costs, and many other issues. Developed by Jef Waltman Technology Consulting, the ACS Tool calculates aggregate estimates and margins of error on the fly and lets the user create and save custom queries and aggregations. That means that a nonprofit with a 21-census tract service area can calculate indicators for that area as a whole without any tedious data processing or complicated calculations. The same is true for custom age groups, income groups, zip code groups – essentially any group of fields or geographies available in the ACS dataset. Usability testing begins soon in partnership with The Health Collaborative and others, and the free tool is scheduled for public release in late 2018 or early 2019.
