The U.S. Census Bureau plans to integrate a commercial off-the-shelf platform with systems developed by in-house experts to collect and process data for the 2020 census.

Census Bureau Director John Thompson wrote in a blog post published Thursday that the bureau’s development teams are working on prototypes that could aid digital data collection for 2020 census field tests and help the bureau evaluate COTS products.

Thompson added the Census Bureau decided on an integrated COTS platform as a result of the efforts of in-house teams and the input of partners from Carnegie Mellon University and the National Academy of Sciences.

“This approach meets our data collection and processing goals for the 2020 Census and builds the infrastructure to support all of our censuses and surveys in the future,” said Thompson.

The director added the timing of the decision is part of efforts to meet schedules for the overall operations and systems integration tests in 2018.

The “hybrid approach” also works to support the bureau’s proposal to save $5.2 billion in the 2020 census compared to the 2010 census, Thompson noted.