The latest on the Census
It’s been more than a week since Census day, so we thought it might be helpful to provide you with an update on what we know has happened so far and what’s next for the Census.
Since coming back online on Thursday 11th August, the Census website has remained operational.
The ABS have reported that more than 50% of Australian dwellings have now submitted a Census form, either online or via a paper form. In 2011, 98.7% of people were counted in the Census.
The attack on the website was purportedly not a hacking attempt, but a malicious attempt to stop people accessing the Census form at the busiest time (denial of service attack).
What happens now?
With the website stable and data secure, I’d encourage people to give the online form a go again – or if you prefer to use a paper form, you can call the ABS on 1300 820 275. Alternatively you can get a paper Census form from an ABS Census field officer.
Census field officers will follow up households who haven’t submitted a Census form starting this week (August 17) in mainly rural and inner city areas that had paper forms and login codes dropped off before census, and next week (from August 24) in areas that had login codes sent in the post to valid addresses.
What if you haven’t received a form?
The communication from ABS about how different households were getting a Census form has not been very clear, and people have been left confused about the process. Many households are reporting not receiving a form at all, and not being able to get through to the Census enquiry service to request one.
Here’s what we know about how Census forms were delivered:
- The majority of areas in metropolitan Australia were mailed a login code to access the Census online website. This was sent to all valid non-business addresses – but some dwellings without a valid address like granny flats and very new dwellings did not receive one and had to call to request a login.
- Some areas within the mail-out zone were mailed a paper form with a login code – these areas were mainly chosen because they had elderly populations less likely to do the form online.
- 20% of Australia, predominantly inner city and rural areas, had forms dropped off in the traditional way, with a Census field officer delivering a paper form and/or login code, and a return mail envelope.
- Some communities like remote indigenous areas and homeless populations have been approached by trained interviewers to complete Census forms. Various other strategies were also used, including people filling out personal forms in hotels and nursing homes.
Looking at this distribution, it would have been useful for the ABS to have communicated this better and even provide a map or address lookup service on their website so people could check how their form was expected to be delivered.
It’s fair to say that demand for paper forms was higher than anticipated. Understandably some people are reticent to put their details on the online site after it was out of operation for some time. However I can report that doing the Census online was a breeze for me and my family once the site came back online. It guides you through the questions and is a whole lot easier than the paper form.
The good news is that the ABS field officers will have paper forms with them, and those people who have had trouble getting a paper form sent to them can simply request one from the field officers (of it not home they will leave one). They will also have mail-back envelopes so the completed Census forms can easily be returned to the ABS.
What about the data?
Does it matter that the Census is no longer a snapshot? Not really – the 9th of August is the reference night for Census, but relatively few of the questions actually relate to that day, and most people’s circumstances don’t change that much in a few weeks, and they can remember where they were on the night.
In reality, no Census is completely a snapshot – many people usually fill it in sometime before or after the night. This time it’s just extending a bit longer. And this was the plan for the 2016 Census – in mailout areas, field officers were only intended to start following up from the 26th of August, giving households plenty of chance to self-respond.
Is there a minimum response rate to make the Census valid?
There isn’t really a minimum response rate required and there is never complete coverage in a Census. A small number of people are always missed, often through no fault of their own. Most people are happy to complete the Census as it provides such tremendous value to the nation, and most people will at sometime or another use or benefit from the data.
In 2011, the coverage was 98.3% (i.e. 1.7% of people were missed). This is estimated by the Post Enumeration Survey, conducted by interviewers after census collection is complete.
Figures quoted in the media have said that 70% returns will be enough to declare the Census ‘valid’. In reality there is no such figure. 70% would be incredibly low, and it’s unlikely to be that low. However the number of people not counted is likely to be higher than in previous years, due to the nature of collection, negative publicity and the website being down on critical days.
It’s not the undercount that matters so much as the distribution of undercount across places and sub-populations. For instance, if no recently arrived migrants filled out the Census form, or an entire town didn’t receive their forms, that would be more of a concern than a uniform 1% of population missing out across the board. Here’s a great article on this topic.
How long do you have to get your Census form in?
The online Census website will be available until September 23 but it’s really intended that everyone should have their Census complete well before then.
ABS field officers will be in the mailout areas from August 26 following up non-responding households. So if you are intending to wait until the last minute, be aware that you may receive a number of visits from Census field staff knocking on your door following up before that date.
As always at .id, we encourage everyone to fill in their Census form accurately. The Census is really the only source of small area and small community population data and it only happens once every 5 years. Local Governments and industry around Australia depend on this information for planning at all levels. While this Census has definitely had some challenges, and communication from the ABS has not been the best, there is still plenty of time to make this Census great.
.id is a company which analyses, enhances and presents Census data in user friendly web applications. You can access our population profiles for free to explore how previous Census results relate to your local area: .id Community profiles for Australia and New Zealand.
Good luck getting useful results from the 2016 census.
For the record, experts doubt that a DDoS attack happened. See this: https://delimiter.com.au/2016/08/19/experts-cast-doubt-census-ddos-claims/
I would encourage no one to complete the census until such time that the ABS can guarantee that there is no SLK that links all government databases and assists the government to monetise its citizens via sales of data extracts. And have you seen how basic the SLK is? http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/lookup/70A712119ED1C2E1CA2579B9000D1585?opendocument – is this some sick joke?
I simply cannot consent to any of this. All this hacking, DDoS stuff is just fluff around the edges of the real issues of privacy and selling personal data to fill government coffers.
The original purpose of the census was to inform redistribution of electoral boundaries based on population. If it goes back to asking how many people live at your address and how old they are, that’s fine. But I don’t think the current form of the census can be justified.
Thanks for the reply. The ABS may have been a bit over-cautious in taking the site down in response to a relatively minor DDoS attack, but based on the level of concern about privacy and hacking out there it was probably justified. No personal data was lost in the attack.
Just to set a few facts straight – there is no attempt to monetise any Census data. The Census is a public dataset with a vast amount of data returned to the public domain, including via .id’s websites as well as the ABS directly. No-one is selling anyone’s personal information (there are very strict restrictions on what hthe ABS can release and they can’t identify individuals), and the Census costs far more to conduct than the ABS makes in the small amount of cost recovery of complex datasets that they produce. To reiterate – no-one’s personal information is ever sold – in fact the Census has never been about personal information, and the SLK key is only about expanding the range of statistical information available and getting the best value out of the Census, which is quite costly to run.
You are right that the original purpose of Census was about electoral boundaries (and estimating the population), but if we were to go to only those very basic questions it would be a sad loss of an extremely useful dataset for all levels of government and business planning. Almost everyone in Australia uses Census data to understand their own communities at some stage, and each place has its own story to tell, a story which can only be told through Census data. Just have a look at some of our community profile websites and the wealth of information on there and ask yourself if we’d want to give this up. Remember it’s the detailed, local level information that matters, and that’s available from no other source.
Just to expand on Glenn’s reply – the Census still does ask how many people are at your address and their ages. Nothing has changed in that respect. In fact, the questions on the Census form have remained largely unchanged (bar a few minor tweaks such as Internet accessibility) since 2006. If you go back further in time, there are many questions on the 2016 Census form that have been asked for many decades, including marital status, occupation, where you lived 5 years ago, birthplace – just to mention a few.
There should be an analytical platform for individuals to do their own search of information on the data.
Is there such a tool?
This is a great idea! In fact we discussed this in the office recently – it would be great if there was a way to access your own Census records back over time, and a nice summary of how your life has changed over time! Unfortunately I’m sure this would be against all the strict privacy rules that the ABS must sign on to in order to have the data available. They can’t release any information about individuals, or even data that might have the potential to identify even a single characteristic of an individual. So I don’t see it happening, but nice idea!
Even if the denial of service attack had not occurred, it is clear now that the ABS made a mess of the census. They catered for only 0,5 million people being online at the same time when it should have been clear that 2.0 million households would probably require the service at its peak.
Not only that, but it seems that more people refused to do it online than were catered for.
Why did the ABS believe that almost all people would do it online and that they would all coordinate their timing with each other to avoid overload?
I think they were definitely over-optimistic about the percentage who would do it online compared to requesting a paper form. With the questions around privacy, many more were opting for the paper form and this caught them unawares and made the phone lines impossible to get through on. Which is a bit ironic, because in many ways the online form is far more secure than paper. But it’s all about perception. Also the promotion of needing to do it on the night of 9th August meant there was a bigger spike at that time than expected. The messaging should probably have been that it’s fine to do it before or after the night, because 99% of people’s details don’t change over that short time frame anyway.
Hi Glen.
I would like some help – is the census per dwelling/house, or is it per person? if that has already been answered, my apology as i have not seen it.
The reason i ask is because i have my place, but will stay between that and my mum’s (as my dad passed away late last year). so if i stayed at my mum’s on the night of the 9th, do i fill out my info under my mum’s place&code, or can i still do it under mine? if the former, do i just ignore my code?
By the way, thanks for the very informative and concise site.
In private households, the Census is done per dwelling, on a household form. You should be included on the form where you stayed on Census night. Anyone who was at your dwelling on Census night would fill in your household form, or if the dwelling was empty you can ring the ABS and tell them so, so they can record it as an unoccupied dwelling. You would have marked your usual address on the household form you filled in, so for most data output you are moved back to your home area.
Thanks for the feedback!
I hear the census stuff up was ‘purportedly’ managerial and government incompetence at a high level’
Except for this one, the track record for successful census collection over 100 years has been good.
Who was in charge of this one?
Nothing has changed in terms of who was in charge of it. However part of the problem which has undermined the public confidence somewhat is I think the involvement of politicians in it. The ABS is an apolitical public service authority – when I worked there we never even knew who the minister in charge of the ABS was. But the public has little faith in politicians, and many have got involved this time, which doesn’t help.
Update from the ABS – 76% of private dwellings have now returned a Census form. There are two weeks of collection followup to continue.
Hi Glenn – Approximately when, and I realise this is entirely dependent on the ABS, do you think we might see 2016 data beginning to filter through into .id forecasts and summaries?
Hi Jeremy,
The ABS will release Census data in 3 stages. The first stage, April 11th, doesn’t affect us too much as it’s national and state data only. 2nd release on June 20th is when most of the datasets will come through for the community profile topics. We will endeavour to update these as soon as possible after this, topic by topic for all our clients. 3rd stage is in October 2017 and includes all the workforce and economy topics. Forecast.id can only be rebuilt on the revised 2016 Census basis once we have updated Estimated Resident Population data, so this will probably start from late 2017 but will be done client by client, based on the age of the current forecasts.