Census innovations in Italy and their technological implications Giuseppe Sindoni, Istat, Italy

What innovations for the 2011 Population Census? Luxembourg, 16 June 2008 Use of street numbers in field operations Business and household geocoding to the census tract Use of administrative archives New questionnaire delivery process Personalised questionnaires Mail out New methods and survey techniques Census areas Short and long form Multi-channel collection Flexible organisation network Downsized municipal front-office => Stronger back-office Differentiation based on population Enumerator guidance

Municipal address archive Process flow for building street number archives Municipal address archive ISTAT Street graph Census tracts Geocoding Georeferencing Poste Italiane Comparison Normalisation Address DB Comuni CON archivio di indirizzi

Control survey on street numbers Performed by field enumerators With suitable instruments for “real time” updating of archives Municipalities to choose own technology High diversification depending on organisational and technological readiness of municipalities

Use of administrative archives Requires use of data exchange technologies between data providers and Istat Technological, format and content standards will be defined (web services, XML, structure schema, record structures, etc.) Goal: maximise process efficiency in line with IT infrastructures of involved organisations Utmost attention to legal issues regarding privacy and security in data management Secure transmission Legally compliant storage Privacy-respecting record identification

New questionnaire delivery process Printing personalised questionnaires Privacy and data security issues Questionnaire identification Need for archiving of questionnaire images On-demand print/reprint of questionnaires for targeted collection Questionnaire mail delivery and management of failed deliveries Requires synchronisation between mailing company and census network monitoring systems The census monitoring system becomes a Distributed information exchange system

New survey methods and techniques: multi-channel collection Web collection has strong technological implications Optimise load and performances On-line vs. off-line compilation Security and consistency checks Synchronisation with monitoring system Multi-channel collection involves Improved complexity of the monitoring system: Tracking collection from the various channels Checking collection inconsistency and coverage System writing privileges for numerous contributors (Istat, municipalities, service providers, etc.)

New survey methods and techniques: short and long form and census areas Two different questionnaires at the same time Improved DB complexity Improved monitoring complexity Before: storing information on who will receive what During survey: verifying delivery and collection consistency Census areas as a new, fundamental territorial level to be managed in information systems Numerous implications for checking, correction, validation and dissemination processes

New survey methods and techniques: targeted collection Impact on front and back-office technologies Enumerators are “guided” daily from the back-office, on the basis of information available from the monitoring system Use of street number list Assigning new questionnaire IDs Daily update of the monitoring system with information on targeted collection activities Data input on the web data collection system

Organisation network flexibility : downsized municipal front-office => stronger back-office Thanks to the use of pre-census archives and geocoded street numbers Essential to have all necessary information to plan daily enumerator activity The monitoring system, acting as an ICT system among those involved, becomes the main component of the census machine

Organisation network flexibility: differentiation based on population Implications mainly on census network monitoring services Configured for each municipality according to its demographic class Some impact on access and authorisation control system

The monitoring system (1) Will offer the census network all necessary services: “Real-time” summary tables based on incoming information flow Almost complete redesign of previous tables As much as possible calculated automatically Easy to access and useable update functions Update information on Multi-channel collection Targeted collection Field activities Communication with external systems

The monitoring system (2) Udine, 22 maggio 2008 Main issues Rightsizing problematic, due to difficult quantification of the relative numbers of questionnaires coming through the various channels Need for thorough and complete respect of data privacy rules in exchanging information Need to guarantee accessibility and good performance to about 10000 users Need to guarantee communication with municipal systems

Conclusions The technological impact of the proposed methodological innovations affects all the census IT systems under development The main implications are on the systems supporting interaction with the census network Use of pre-census archives and street numbers lays down a scenario where the survey monitoring system plays a fundamental, unprecedented role