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Australia Conducting Electronic Census
ajdlinux writes "On 8th August 2006, the Australian Bureau of Statistics will be conducting the 2006 Census of Population and Housing. The big difference this year is that you will now be able to fill out your census online. The technology, developed by IBM, cost AU$9 million and is designed to be accessible to screen readers, and, unlike similar efforts in Canada, does not require any special software.
However, there is concern that the 2011 eCensus could be integrated with the proposed Human Services Access Card. Will this turn the Census from an anonymous snapshot into one connected with name-identified information?"
Funny, I filled in my household's data the week the census was opened for submissions, and I sure don't recall having to install any special software. Maybe it was a Java applet, but it sure as hell wasn't anything that I had to take action on.
Fellow Canuckleheads, did you have to install anything?
"I don't get it." -- ObviousGuy
The NZ census held earlier this year supported Web-based online filing. It was a very clean UI (some touches of DHTML to streamline the interface), worked in IE, Firefox, Safari and Opera, and overall seemed to work very well indeed.
I'd like to see the hardware they have to handle the web traffic. There will be litterally millions of people trying to access the webpage on the day. I'd really like to submit my information electronically but I'm not going to wait around for ages to do it if the system dies in the arse.
I'd rather fill out the form if its going to take me just as much time to submit it online.
Assuming the system stands up to the traffic I'm all for it. I can type my details much faster then write them and I don't have to talk to the census collector when they come to get it.
Also:
Jedi as your religion FTW!
Online census submission was done in New Zealand earlier this year, that is how I filled out mine.
The Canadian online census form required a web browser and Java. While that's a step up from being a plain HTML form, I think calling it "special software" is a bit of an exaggeration.
It is silly to worry about the cenusus being used to collect your personal information. The government already does that much more frequently and accurately through taxes.
Philosophy.
Just think about it for a second if a site that will hold that kind of information is going to get more traffic than a slashdotted site. Hope they don't do it in the US because no server the goverment can afford take that kind of beatting or cowboyneal could give to it!
A site cowboyneal will like http://www.freewebs.com/atpa/
Little old lady knocked on the door, gave me all the gear I needed. You get the normal forms and then an envelope containing your online code to be entered in for your household. I'll give the online one a bash and then fashion the paper one into a nice evening jacket...
Task Mangler
How can it be anonymous when you have to give your name, address, where you work, and what you are currently doing as well as the IP address if you are doing it online and other random bits of information. This is the most invasive census I've ever been a part of.
I ate your fish.
The census comes around every 5 years. The questions are so bland, and demographic as to really make this census, not useless, but a wasted opportunity.
It would have been so easy to include some extra questions (not political ones, because no government would agree in mid-term), but rather social questions. Like some national survey instead of a selective one (like a poll of a 1000 people).
I can think of one question that would be highly applicable to all Australians:
Would you support recycled sewerage being pumped back to the potable water supply?
Or
Rate your preference for a solution to the water shortage problems: 1) Desalination, 2) recycling, 3) more dams, 4) long distance canals, 5) relocate the towns/cities, etc...
But, all the questions are related to how do you get to work, how much do you earn and where do you study...
Sad. Same questions as last census.
Hopefully in the future this will change.
I would think another problem is that it will mean the census is no longer a snapshot of a single day in Australia.
Check out this article.
If the pattern goes 9am, 10am, 11am, why isn't noon 12am?
I filled out my Canadian census online and didn't need any special software. All I used was Firefox, IIRC.
Seriously, by what process do I approve what is held on the card and how can I check they are the only things being stored? How do I know some clandestine government organisation is not collating the data and tracking my every move? What do I care if they are?
I don't make predictions, and I never will.
The strange thing about the Australian census is they're really strict about it. I'm an exchange student here right now, and despite the fact that I'm not an Australian citizen and may never be, I have just as much obligation to fill this out and fast. We get like, 1 or 2 days to fill it out and turn it in or we're charged fines of $100/day until it's done. Makes you wonder what happens to people traveling who can't even get the paperwork, nevermind to somewhere that they can drop it off.
Putting the 33k in G33k.
Christ, the last thing you want is to start putting questions like that on a census.
Almost all social research can deliver highly accurate findings using a relatively small sample. Interviewing one thousand people will give you extremely high levels of confidence in the results, providing of course you don't fuck up the methodology. After that, you're mostly wasting everybody's time.
Australians are required to complete the census by law. Even if you make the questions optional, adding a bunch of "nice-to-know"s is a big misuse of national manpower. And just imagine the kind of push-polling you'd get if you opened the floodgates and let government departments throw in social-research questions. ("Do you support the government protecting the lives of unborn babies by banning stem cell research?")
There's a need for social research, and governments already do enormous amounts of it. But you don't need to interview 20 million people to find out that most people don't like the idea of drinking recylcled sewerage.
I should buy some cement.
The already can track you with the paper forms, but they don't and are forbidden by law to do so. http://tinyurl.com/juxwc This is not America, despite the current government's best efforts.
Jedi,
Down under, may the force be with you!
"There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness."- Friedrich Nietzsche
We use New Zealand as our UAT environment for this stuff :-P
And nope, no "special" or additional software was required or necessary.
I guess the desire by certain 'editors' to get Australia mentioned on Slashdot supercede's the need for anything of interest in the subsequent story.
I can say the they have done quite a good job. It is pretty slick. Some DHTML (mostly disabling questions based on earlier answers).
I imagine it will seriously cut down the amount of time taken to process the census. I have a friend who works on this stuff so I might ask him.
One complaint they have is that lots of people are filling out the census before the actual census night. This is allowed, you are answering questions about what will be happening on a night in the future.
meh
The Canadian census fiasco caused me no end of grief. They never sent me a form and then hounded me for a month about not sending the form they didn't send me in. Then one day I get a notice pinned to my door, without the form of course, threatening jail time and fines (3 months and $500). Well that's motivating so I tried to fill the thing out on-line but since I did not get a form I did not get a special code to punch in. On top of all that the java thing wouldn't run in FF and linux anyway. (At least they tried to keep it non-IE specific, I'll give 'em that.) So I called the toll-free number on the notice and dude did the question thing over the phone in 2 minutes and gave me a confirmation number. "What's that for?", I wonder. "In case anyone calls", he says. Yeah, yeah, I'm here now go away. But no. They continue to leave me threatening notices and phone messages for another two weeks so I finally find the local number and give dudette my confirmation number. She apologizes and tells me there is no way for her to know if I did the thing on-line or by phone. "Say what?? But isn't it in some computer somewhere? I clearly heard dude tapping on a keyboard!" Well yes but how it works is I have to call her directly and give her the confirmation number because she does not have access to that computer and the people that do (in our nations capital I presume, or possibly the District of Columbia which would explain much) don't send the info back to the local door bangers. I guess that feature would complicate things and I suppose they're still working out a few bugs.
Maybe if Vista is out for the next one in 5 years the info will be able to move in both directions.
When do us Yankees/Rednecks get to fill our census online?
Computerworld didn't RTPR (Read The Press Release) and got the story wrong.
5 6353001af3ed4b2562bb00121564/3f66b0f18ba6dd0dca257 1be0006834b!OpenDocument
There won't be any inclusion of census data or linking of data to the smartcard. See http://www.abs.gov.au/websitedbs/d3310114.nsf/4a2
The Australian Bureau of Statistics is tin-foil-hat-league paranoid about protecting the confidentiality of information that it gets from its surveys and censuses.
Disclaimer, I work there.
(Oh, the online census form works fine on Firefox/Linux in case you are in Australia and need to fill one out...but not before the 8th of August, ok!)
I've been in and had a quick look and it's a nice site that works under Linux (all you need is Javascript enabled).
What will be fun though are the answers to specific questions. There is a grassroots push for anyone who doesn't wish to answer the religion question to put FSM or Pastafarian (Flying Spaghetti Monster if you were wondering, as a protest against intelligent design) in. This would be more fun tha listing Jedi as 70,000 people did in 2001, and as we have the option to release full uncensored details in 2105 to our descendants it will be a great joke on them. Pity that we won't be around to see them scratch their heads on that one.
The other "informal" answer question is number 5, marital status. There is a similar push to have "Same Sex Marriage" put in as the answer for anyone who wishes to protest the Howard/Costello coservative constitutional amendments rushed through to stop such an act.
Orationem pulchram non habens, scribo ista linea in lingua Latina
Are there Jedi (70k last time) and Pastafarian tick boxes?
This will be a bit long, and I can only draw the dots for you (my conclusions are too inflammatory). If you are on this page, you are concerned about you privacy and security, and you deserve to know enough to make your own mind up about whether you are being well-served or not.
I feel able to comment on this because of my previous lives as:
1) Designer of well-known loyalty programs, both in Oz and other countries, both market analysis AND transactional. This was crossed with census data.
2) A former public servant who had MAJOR fights about non-compliance with privacy and accessibility of web sites.
3) I was competent enough in the 1980s to be invited to be the tech lead in an electronic warfare project, which I refused, and I've seen hints that Oz agencies have been snooped on by non-allies (hint May 2001).
Whether or not there is "Big Brother" malice by our double-plus-good government, very few agencies are up to the task of good data custodianship - and this opens things up for abuse. It's worth considering the commercial value of census information......
OK, the first thing to realize is just how small a Census Sub Sub District (CSSD) is, and what this allows an unscrupulous person to do. It's pretty easy to narrow things down to a single household unless most of the people in your half-block have the same number of adults, same number of kids, similar relationships, etc. You won't be sure you know who the stats belong to, but you can guess. An analogy is with an employee database, when you aren't allowed to query an individual's salary, only averages and totals for groups - but you can select a group WITH and WITHOUT the person of interest, and then it is just simple maths.
Combine this with the generally poor recordkeeping, data custodianship practices and technical competencies in many agencies, (I'll tell you how to figure out how good an agency is at dotting i's and crossing t's in a minute or two), the number of contractors now in agencies (who don't realize they have a regulatory requirement to act just like a public servant, and may have other agenda), poor governance, and you might begin to see the problem.
MIND YOU, MANY PROBLEMS COULD BE AMELIORATED SIMPLY BY A TEN-FOLD INCREASE IN FUNDS TO THE AUDIT OFFICE (www.anao.gov.au), BUT FEW IN POWER WANT THAT?
So, the trick is to see just how competent an agency is. How do you do that from the outside? Well, examining the web pages of a site (don't hack, just LOOK at what they send you during normal activities) will give you some indications. Compare what the agency DOES with what the MINIMUM requirements for websites of agencies (or government owned businesses, or agency work sub-contracted out). You can find these requirements at www.agimo.gov.au/practice/mws and use the theory that "if there are cockroaches at the front of the restaurant, it will be REAL bad in the kitchen where customers don't go". As "The Economist" said, website quality is a good proxy indicator of the quality of the company or agency that owns the pages.
DO THESE TESTS MANUALLY, ONLY TEST DATA THE AGENCY KNOWS THEY SEND TO THE OUTSIDE WORLD AS PART OF NORMAL ACTIVITY, AND YOU CAN'T GET DONE FOR HACKING.
How do you tell an agencies committment and competence in technology and contract management?
A. Do they know HTML, the basic language of web pages?
If a website cannot give you error-free HTML, which is pretty easy, then there is little chance they are doing the hard stuff in the back office, which you cannot see. So, how many stupid errors does the home page have. Check it out using http://validator.w3.org/ and type in the web address you want checked. Compare the number of simple syntax errors between agencies and companies. For starters, http://www.abs.gov.au/ has 48, http://stream0.census.abs.gov.au/eCensusWeb/ has 1,
New Zealand did internet census, right at the start of the year.
It's important to understand that it's not purely electronic. The forms are delivered to homes by hand and an estimate of the number of people expected to be there that evening is collected. The forms have a unique ID code on them that must be used when submitting online.
These measures make it a LOT harder to submit garbage census results en-masse. Not impossible, I'm sure, but I think it'd be pretty hard to pull off major bogus submissions, let alone undetectably.
That said, I'd love to see what Bruce Schneider could spot in terms of security issues...
... 51% of the e-census forms will come back labeled 'Bush'.
Who came up with that one?
I filed my census return online in Firefox a couple of weeks ago. It took only about 10 minutes in total (actually less, maybe 5). I actually _enjoyed_ the process.
Maury
Seriously where do you think water comes from? Magic sky fairies? If we can develop a system that recycles water even close to what the natural rain cycle does, then it would be a hell of a lot better quality then most current dams (which get polluted by all sorts of things). You do realise that fish and birds quite happily crap in the dams don't you?
========
CINC, 4th Penguin Legion
See statement from the Australian Statistician "Statement by the Australian Statistician confirming the confidentiality of the Census There have been suggestions of a possible link between the Census and the forthcoming Access Card, otherwise known as the 'Smartcard'. I can give an iron clad guarantee that absolutely no individual Census information will be provided for inclusion on the Access Card. Besides, it would be illegal to do so. There are very strong secrecy provisions in the statistics legislation that prevent release of identifiable information to anyone, including Government agencies. Breaches are subject to heavy fines and/or imprisonment. Your Census information will be absolutely confidential. The ABS has an outstanding track record in protecting the confidentiality of Census information and that will continue. Dennis Trewin Australian Statistician" Source: www.abs.gov.au/census then select Media Centre
We had our Census 2006 a few months ago online ...
...
...
Of course, paper still works today, one can't assume EVERYONE has internet access or want to use it
Beat ya to it aussies
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
I filled out the Canada Census online.
... unless you consider an ordinary web browser to be special.
I required no special software
George Bush + Linux = "I will not let information get in the way of the fight against Windows"
Yeah, yeah, it's cool to be able to complete a Census Form on-line...
(Except for today or yesterday's news reports of security breeches, ie, that the Australian Tax Office, et al.
in which the eCensus was mentioned as anogther possible target.)
BUT... one still has to WAIT FOR PAPER FORMS TO BE DELIVERED!!!
The paper Census Form contains a number - linked to your street address - known to both you & your Collector
(the Official who comes round to your home to deliver Census Forms); an included "PIN number" (in a security
envelope) provides the key (or password) to your eCensus experience.
But - as Collectors are casual, part-timers - often with full-time jobs - one may not receive a paper form
until the Collector for your area has a free moment to get to your door.
Even Census Collectors haev to wait (I guess that's fair), since they deliver to other (often neighboring)
Collection Districts, ie, not their own; ie, unless they can contact the collector for their CD & pursuade
them to provide the all-important Census Form number for use on the eCensus.
So - as in "all things Aussie" - we still have to wait for some slow wheel of buracracy to roll around, ie,
before some potentially cool, highly-promoted improvement works as it should.
Oh, even in areas where well over 25% of the dwellings' residents say they intend to complete an "eCensus"
(online), they still get a paper form!
And, of course, the PIN-number comes in a separate security envelope (as mentioned above), so, at present,
THERE'S EVEN -MORE- BLOODY DEAD-TREE PAPER GETTING DELIVERED TO AUSTRALIAN HOMES in 2006 than in 2001!!!
Presumably designed &/or printed in Canberra... more jobs (if boring ones) for sons & daughters of bureaucrats!
...which means it has an accuracy rate somewhat south of Wikipedia and you shouldn't take article postings at their word.
/.
I filled out my Canadian census on-line using Firefox on SuSE Linux and it worked fine. It DID rely on Java--is this what the poster referred to as "special software"? It seems to me that a JVM isn't all that "special" nor did I have to do a special installation of it to participate in the census.
Perhaps the Australian version is Java-free, but it's hardly an innovation of any kind, much less one worthy of posting on
...I could use FireFox on SuSE to fill out my census form, as I filed on the last day. Sometimes it pays to procrastinate ;-). I was ready to give the gov't kudos for respecting interoperability but I guess they were dragged there kicking and screaming. Oh well, at least they responded properly if slowly.
In other (old) news. I filed my tax return on-line using Linux for the first time this spring...one less reason to miss Windows...
I have a question, if you're a Canadian citizen living abroad, should you attempt to fill out the census online? I mean, technically, I'm a Canadian, but I live in Seattle right now.
And - if not - why not?
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je m'excuse, j'ai oublie' comment on doit utiliser le "spell-check".
Je voudrais dire "Canadian", pas "Candadian" au parent.
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Supposedly the US census locks up the actual data for 70 years, then releases it. Geneologists and other can use it then. The US aggregates the results in zip-code (single post-office) size chucks, but some people worry about the privacy of that.
The US sent out 4-page form to 5/6ths and a 13-page form to 1/6. So it does both a full ennumeration (as the law requires) and a statistical esitmate.
The Canada site didn't support Linux and Firefox, so I just waited it out until the census people called me. They had to make it stupidly difficult...
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Tu peux toujours telephoner pour verifier si tu devrais te compter ou pas 1 877 594 2006.
.. fine you if it is anonymous?
Non, 1 877 594 2006, c'est un numero que fonctionne seulement au Canada. Mais j'ai utilise' la correspondence electronique, en ce cas.
Comme j'ai dit, j'habit a Seattle.
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