Online debut for Census expected to be a big hit

Census forms can be filled out on the internet this year. Picture / Brett Phibbs

The New Zealand Census is going online this year, and Statistics New Zealand is expecting a lot of people to fill in their forms this way.

The agency, which will deploy a team of 6500 officials in early March to deliver and collect Census forms to 4.2 million people, expects up to 20 per cent of the population will forgo paper forms for their electronic equivalent.

About 600,000 people from 250,000 households are expected to complete the online process.

The Census provides a snapshot of the population and allows the Government to plan for future growth.

Census day is March 7, but the forms are already on Statistic NZ's website, ready for those who have already been issued Census household ID and PIN numbers.

Anyone who has filled out an online subscription form, bought books from Amazon or shuffled funds between bank accounts online will be well prepared to complete the online Census.

Each household will be issued a form carrying their household ID and a unique PIN number, which is then entered online for each person completing the form.

But is the system robust enough to handle a potential load of tens of thousands of people, all attempting to file their forms at once?

There are plenty of horror stories when it comes to IT systems being placed under huge strain for short periods of time. When it comes to mass-market online transactions, both the public and private sector are at the mercy of technology.

In 2004, the electronic counting of votes in council and district health board elections around the country was disrupted by computer glitches in the systems of New Zealand Post subsidiary Datamail. The votes had to be re-counted manually.

In December, the website of ticket seller Ticketmaster failed to cope with the thousands of fans attempting to buy tickets to U2's March concerts online.

Statistics NZ, however, is anticipating smooth sailing for its maiden online Census.

Graeme Osborne, group manager for information business services at Statistics NZ, says the online Census system has been publicly tested three times and any kinks have long since been ironed out.

"The basic consensus among the telcos and internet providers is that an electronic form is fairly light use of the internet. Our web servers will be under pressure but we can manage the load," he says.

Statistics NZ, which has a budget of $70 million spread over five years for the 2006 Census, has outsourced the bulk of the online system development to IT integrator Datacom.

"Statistics New Zealand could host it but we're not used to coping with big spikes of users," Osborne says.

He adds that the agency has taken measures to ensure that moving the project to an outside provider won't introduce technical problems.

"We got [Datacom] to re-engineer the form themselves so they couldn't blame our software [in the event of a problem]."

At the other end of the process, mobile developer Intergen created a system that will cut down on unnecessary visits to households by Census officials.

"There are field systems that allow us to send a message to an official's mobile informing that a household has completed its form," Osborne says.

"It means the Census official doesn't have to go to house number 11 because they've [already] filed online."

Businesses can also access Census information for their planning and marketing campaigns, but no individual is ever identified in any statistics that get a public airing. Osborne says the same is true of the online Census, which has security measures built in.

The forms are tamper-proof and can't be hijacked by malicious vandals, he says.

The first person to take advantage of the online forms filled them out in 16 minutes, shortly after they were posted last Friday, Osborne says.

While Statistics NZ's IT team will closely scrutinise the progress of the online Census over the next couple of weeks, other Governments are keen to learn some tips before they launch their own operations.

Later this year, Statistics Canada will carry out its first online Census. Statscan is also creating a database of all Canadian addresses so two-thirds of Census forms can be delivered through the postal system, reducing the need for vast numbers of officials to hit the streets. Canada is also aiming for a 20 per cent uptake.

"Britain, Canada and Australia are watching us as they'll be following us this year," Osborne says.

Singapore, with a high density of internet users, was the first to take its Census online, in 2000. South Korea followed soon after.

Osborne says that for the 2011 Census, it would not be unrealistic to expect half of the Census forms to be filed online.

There is scope to create efficiencies in the information-gathering process and the quality of information is better when entered into an electronic form.

Still, for 2006 it is largely a hand-written exercise and the online element will not radically speed up the collation of the information gathered. It will be released gradually from May with complex analyses available from February, 2007.

"The timing of results won't be different for 2006. Around 80 per cent of people will still do it manually."