9 August 2006

Every Australian Counts

Last night was Census Night. Every five years the Australian Bureau of Statistics organises a national census. Traditionally this has been a very large form asking lots of details. Although it is a well designed form, with a family of eight it is tedious to complete.
This year they went high tech and set up the ability for people to enter the census online. Woohoo! Over 1 million people took advantage of this and I filled out our data this morning. It was much easier.
The Census is compulsory, with fines of $100 a day for non compliance. At least with the online option you don't have to worry about the local collector reading all your answers. (Although there are lots of pretty good systems in place to prevent this happening, I still reckon it is inefficient.)
So now we count. At least in the ABS's eyes anyway.

1 comment:

patternnuts said...

I was one of the "lucky ones" for the more in depth one a few years back. SO MANY questions! They time it here so it is right around tax time too- double whammy!