OK. Guys.
I know this is literally so last week. But we need to talk about the Census again.
So, let us put down our Bachie recaps for a moment, let us leave our talk of Roxy Jacenko’s upcoming 60 Minutes interview and our discussion about the fact that Bec Judd is constantly body shamed. Just for a moment. OK, well, just for 20 minutes.
You definitely are might be aware there were a few issues on ‘Census night’ last Tuesday. A couple of wee ‘denial of service’ attacks. Nothing major.
I’m not joking. DDoS attacks happen all the time. In 2013, according to EWeek, IT security outfit NSFOCUS compiled some data that shows there are 28 DDoS attacks every hour. There’s some stuff floating around the Internet that suggests DDoS attacks are up in 2016, but, er, I didn’t really understand what these guys and these guys were saying and I ran out of time to call my network engineer husband to get him to explain it.
Listen: The Mamamia Out Loud podcast discusses #CensusFail 2016. (Post continues after audio.)
ANYWAY, upshot is, DDoS. Happens all the time. It happens to every site. It happens to Twitter. It happens to most media outlets. Amusingly, Nexusguard who do research about DDoS attacks say it happens to people who do research about DDoS attacks.
So, the Census site had a day or two offline, having a little rest.
But the Census is back up now, ready for you to go and fill in your form. Only problem is, ya’ll seem to have forgotten to go fill it in.
Duncan Young, head of the Census at the Australian Bureau of Statistics, says while the response rate is down a little bit from where it’s been in previous Censuses, it’s not all bad news.
“We’ve seen another million forms come in since the form got back up on Thursday.”
Hooray!
“But I think there is a risk that some people don’t realise that the system came back up again on Thursday. And, I think there’s also a risk that it just hasn’t come back onto people’s radar yet. But the Census is still just as important as it was on Tuesday.”
Too right, Duncan.
The Census is important. It’s what helps inform and shape the future direction of our country. No really, it does. How else will the Government know how many hospitals to build, where to build them and how big they should be?
If you haven’t filled in your form yet, you’ll probably be hearing from the Census people soon.
“We’ve got planned a period of reminding people. People will get a reminder letter either late this week or early next week and they will get visits from our field officers if they haven’t completed. But the sooner people do it the better,” Duncan explains.
If you haven’t done it yet, though, and you’re fretting about how you might have messed up the data sample, don’t be.
“There’s actually a little bit of an illusion in people’s minds that everyone fills it out on census night. People have always filled out the census over a period of time. They fill it out in relation to the Tuesday night. You talk about who stayed in the house on that Tuesday night,” he adds.
Watch: The Project team discusses #CensusFail. (Post continues after video.)
“What we’ve seen with previous Censuses is that people do fill out the forms up to a month after Census night.
“We do have a range of processes which help manage any particular changes. We do quality checks to pick up any double counting, quality checks to pick up any under counting. Not everyone has ever been able to do it instantaneously on one night.”
“We were still visiting people into the second week of September in 2011 and we expect to doing the same this time. We had always planned for that.”
I put it to Duncan that it would be fair to say, that aside from the blip on Tuesday night the Census process is carrying on as it always has.
“Yeah absolutely. It just means we’re a little bit behind where we would have been in terms of response rate… Anything we can do to pick that back up.
"I guess the silver lining of the incident is that most people did hear about it on the night and most people will have some recollection when the census went down."
True that. We all know where we were when we found out that Sam Wood had proposed to Snezana, and we all know where we were when the Census went down.
The Census form is back up. If you haven't filled it, would you just pop over here and do it now for us, please? Thanks!
In case you missed it, here's why some people were calling it #censusfail before the census even began. (They were wrong, by the way - at least that's what I said last week.)
Top Comments
August 9, 2016 has eclipsed the winter solstice as the longest night of the year.
Why do people have such a big problem with filling out the Census all of a sudden? Did you feel the same way about the last one, or is it just popular now to mistrust the government? Obviously, there have been issues with the online one - they clearly were not prepared - but all the conspiracy theories are just ridiculous. Worried about giving out your name and address together? Don't receive mail, because it's printed on the front of that. Uncomfortable about telling the government about your job? Don't fill out your tax returns (and risk another fine). Uncomfortable about providing the data you've provided to internet companies over and over? Don't use any form of social media - in fact, go live off the grid where you won't be forced to use any of the public conveniences (roads, schools, hospitals, etc.) that are designed off the back of information like this.
Why?
Because the ex-boss of the Australian Bureau of Statistics described the new policy of keeping names and linking them to other datasets as the "most significant
invasion of privacy ever perpetrated" (by the bureau of statistics).
Names never used to be compulsory. Now, for reasons not explained, they are compulsory. Data used to be disposed of, now it won't be. And now, your details will result in what amounts to a central ID number that can be used to (possibly?) cross-reference all your govt data.
Add to this that current ABS chief told a Senate inquiry "There is a lot of, perhaps, misinformation about the value of census... There is a sense in the community that a lot of the information is derived from the census, which is just not true." - and you wonder why we're doing this at all.
It seems the most useful thing the Census provides is population numbers used to determine electoral boundaries. They don't need names for that.
The government already has your name and address together, in several forms. But government departments can't share data easily. Names are required to establish relationships between respondents more easily (it can be difficult when you've got cultural groups who have different naming systems), and also to make it easier for people to remember which part of the form they're filling out (it asks you things like, "Where was XX on Tuesday, August 9?").
And the data will be destroyed, just later than usual(four years now, instead of the past 18 months). Again, it's data you've provided to the government before, and probably less data than you provide to social media platforms everyday without even thinking about it.
The Census is also used to plan for education, healthcare, employment, transport, etc.
I don't do Facebook or Twitter or Instagram. I don't even use my name or email address here.
As for the planning, read again what the current ABS boss told a Senate inquiry. The census is largely irrelevant.
I should correct one error. Names have been required for many years. What's different this time is using name and address details to create a personal ID which will not be destroyed after four years (which is just one year before the next census will collect all those details again).
Beyond that, this Census is dead in the water. It is supposed to be a national snapshot of one evening. It is no longer any such thing. People who were in the country on August 9 are now overseas - or dead. Others who were overseas are now back and living with people filling out their census late. Others have been born.
But they're still asked: where were you on August 9? Not where they are right now. People being born or dying isn't relevant, because the Census is about what the country looked like on August 9. I agree that with the computer system stuff-up, it probably won't be very accurate now.