Human Factors Digitizing is extremely labor intensive. It leaves a lot of room for operator error, and it is time consuming. U.S.G.S. would limit its operators to 45 minutes of digitizing at one time to cut down on the amount of error. Another problem with this labor-intensive method is that it is expensive in this country since labor costs are relatively high here. Offshore Digitizing As a result of the high cost of labor in the U.S., most maps are sent overseas to be digitized in countries with low labor prices.
Counties commonly associated with offshore digitizing include India and Taiwan.
In some of these countries, labor so cheap that maps are digitized two different times, by two different operators. The differences between the two digitized maps can then be taken into account before the final map is sent out. The U.S. Government however does now forbid any of its contracts to go to foreign countries for map digitizing. The scanners used have resolutions in the several thousandths on and inch range. They are typically of the drum type in which the map is secured to the outside of a large drum that is rotated as the scanning head stays in place.