LESSON LEARNED FROM USE OF REGISTERS AND GEOCODED DATABASES IN POPULATION AND HOUSING CENSUS Conference of European Statisticians Paris, 6 June 2012 G. Sindoni, G. Stassi, D. Zindato (Istat, Italy)

NEW METHODS AND TECHNIQUES FOR THE ITALIAN CENSUS Use of existing records to construct census lists New geographical instruments Sample survey for certain variables Census management system Postal delivery of questionnaires Mixed-mode return of questionnaires Systematic recovery of non-responders Systematic recovery of unregistered individuals Crosscheck of census and municipality records

RUNNING THE CENSUS: ORGANIZATION, MAIL OUT AND RETURN MODES The numbers – 25 million households, more than 50,000 residential institutions – 60 million people – 70,000 enumerators, 10,000 co-ordinators, a network of 8,094 Municipal Census Offices and 110 Provincial Census Offices. Mailing out of 25 million questionnaires over 6 weeks, beginning on 12 September and ending on 22 October. 3 million questionnaires delivered by the end of first week 23.3 million questionnaires delivered in all Remaining 2 million households were not reached by mail Online questionnaire was activated on Sunday 9 October Very high peak of accesses reached during the first hours

RUNNING THE CENSUS: RETURN OF QUESTIONNAIRES More than 7.5 million individuals enumerated during first 10 days 3.5 million online. By the beginning of field operations, 7 out of 10 households had returned their questionnaire. About 24,8 million questionnaires returned Breakdown significantly different from the Pilot Survey – much lower response rate online and for the MCCs and much higher rate for return by post and collection by the enumerators.

RUNNING THE CENSUS: FIELD OPERATIONS Paper questionnaires converged to the MCOs for back office operations Households actually residing in the municipality who were not included in the population register were enumerated Information condensed in the Enumeration Area Diary Enumerators responsible for field operations 100% of the Enumeration Area Diary rows closed, of a total of more than 30,000,000 rows.

LESSONS LEARNED: LOGISTICS Not all addresses in the municipal registers could be processed by the contractor system. About 2,000,000 questionnaires had to be delivered directly by the enumerators. Information about questionnaires returned to post offices was not always reported promptly A different approach put the municipalities in charge of questionnaire delivery

LESSONS LEARNED: ORGANIZATION DIVERSITY Municipalities want to work in different ways: – some are enumerator area-oriented – others want to distribute work independently from enumerator areas – small villages may need only a couple of people and one collection centre. Larger towns need a structured organisation. – Running the census in big cities with millions of residents is a different task altogether. This entails a very flexible management system, reflected to a certain extent in the management system A more intelligent and flexible system could have three configurations, for villages, towns and cities

LESSONS LEARNED: ASSISTING CITIZENS Citizens need help in understanding many aspects of the census Municipalities need assistance to cope with special cases and technical issues Assistance to citizens was provided through a specialised company. Istat provided a second level help desk Assistance to municipal census offices was also provided directly by Istat In dealing with such a large and complex work, a second level help desk should be considered as one of the most important tasks of the census process and be implemented through dedicated, adequately trained staff

LESSONS LEARNED: PERFORMANCE MONITORING Close monitoring of census performance is a critical task On line reports designed to minimise impact on system’s performance while offering census operators some information This proved insufficient Not possible to implement such a system on top of an operational database Need for real time mirroring of the database data warehouse to provide the needed dashboard