Government responds to #censusfail report

The federal government has rejected a recommendation to make it voluntary to supply a person's name when filling out the Census.

As part of a minority opinion from the Senate Economic References Committee report into the 2016 census, senators Nick Xenophon and Stirling Griff recommended that the Census and Statistics Act be amended to make clear that the provision of a person's name is not mandatory.

But the government's response states that mandatory provision of a name in the Census is "necessary for a high quality Census and consistent with international practice".

The response added that if providing a name was made voluntary, the ABS would be hampered in its ability to provide accurate estimates of the resident population.

The government did accept most of the main committee's recommendations, including requiring the ABS to publish all future Privacy Impact Assessments 12 months in advance of holding the Census to which they relate, and updating ABS internal guidelines to require active engagement with the private sector.

In addition, the government's response states that the ABS is already working on some of the recommendations in response to the MacGibbon review into the failures associated with the online component of the most recent census.

These include ensuring the ABS conducts an open tendering process for future technologies that will need to be supplied by the private sector and holding an Information Security Registered Assessors Program Assessment for the upcoming 2021 Census.

But the government also rejected recommendations that the Minister in Charge of the Census Michael McCormack help ABS fill senior positions left vacant for longer than six months, that any changes involving linking Census data to other administrative data sets be brought to parliament for approval and that a new independent privacy impact assessment related to the changes being introduced to the process be conducted within the next six months.

Image courtesy ABS.

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