Here's a picture of a guy from FEMA going door to door in Oklahoma checking on residents who have been out of power from the ice storms. He's carrying a clipboard with lots of papers. Surely what he writes will then get typed into a computer. Wouldn't it make more sense to use a Tablet and do the data entry directly?

The benefit of the clipboard however is it's light weight and it's not dependant on battery life. Yes, it's cheaper, too.