Case Study: Booz Allen Hamilton achieves rapid, insight-driven access to Census data with Elastic

Using Elasticsearch to Help Generate New Insights from Census Data

Booz Allen Hamilton built a search prototype to make complex Census data easy to explore. The team faced challenges from richly structured data — multiple surveys and vintages, a deep geography hierarchy, many topics and industries — and strict UX requirements like Boolean-style filtering across facets, no dead ends, and ~100 ms response times.

They implemented a solution using the Elastic Stack and Elasticsearch with a semi‑normalized indexing strategy to balance size and speed, Shield for role‑based access, and features like query caching, mapping APIs and relevancy models. The prototype delivers fast, no‑dead‑end searches (targeting ~100 ms), reduced index cost, and ~25% faster responses from caching, surfaced through a filterable UI on data.census.gov to help users discover new insights.

Booz Allen Hamilton

Jesus Jackson

Chief Data Scientist