Census night is the 9th August
2016 and this is when all Australians will be called upon to provide details
about themselves to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). The census has
been run every five years since 1911 and this information is used to capture
population data that can be used to inform Government about policy and funding
decisions. This is includes areas such as housing, transport, education,
industry, hospitals and the environment. This year there are a couple of major
differences in the collection and analysis of census data. This is the first
year that electronic lodgement of census forms will be available. Letters
should be arriving in your post box shortly to provide you with your unique
login to the census website. It is still possible to lodge a paper form if that
is preferred. A reminder letter will be sent to households that have not
completed the census and field officers may provide a follow up visit.
The second change to the data collection is that names and
addresses will be retained for four years (as opposed to 18 months) to allow
for better matching of individual information across different data sets. In previous
years, name and address data was not used for data matching, which has limited
the scope of statistical analysis. In this census, information will be
anonymised by creating a unique key from name and address data. Access to the
anonymised data will need to be approved by senior level committee. The ABS
states that "Other government agencies, private agencies and
direct marketing companies will not have access to personal information that
you provide on the Census form. This is protected by law."
For more information follow the links below.
