However, Wagner said voice support might be added if its use could be controlled. "We haven't dismissed it entirely," he said, noting that perhaps census takers could be allowed to talk via the handhelds to their crew leaders only.

The contract with Harris also covers the IT infrastructure, hardware and software needed to support the handhelds at about 455 local Census Bureau offices. Dell Inc. will supply PCs and servers, and Oracle Corp. will provide software for integrating data from the handhelds with information in back-end systems.

Other vendors involved in the project include Accenture Ltd., Unisys Corp. and Headstrong Corp., an IT consulting and systems engineering firm in Fairfax, Va. Craig Mathias, an analyst at Farpoint Group in Ashland, Mass., said he isn't aware of any deployments of wireless handhelds that are larger than the one planned by the Census Bureau.