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

2. 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

3. 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

4. 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

5. 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

6. 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

7. 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.)

8. 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

9. 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

10. 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

11. 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

12. 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

13. 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 users
Need to guarantee communication with municipal systems

14. 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