On 12/02/2020 09:25, Jeff Layman wrote:

Nearly all the information available from a census is obtainable form
other sources (the birth, marriage, and death register is a good start).
Some countries have realised this and don't require a general census

That is one of those "yes in theory" kind of things, that tends to
collapse into chaos the moment you look at the implementation details.

The reality is that the information that exists is spread across
multiple databases - not necessarily all accessible centrally. All these
databases are "not connected" - not only physically - different
incompatible systems, different networks / repositories, but also
logically not connected - They are all using different key fields and
with no way of accurately joining records from one with another, with
any assurance that you have linked the correct records together. Even
when correctly joined there is no way of resolving conflicts between
them. You also have the difficulty that the data were collected for a
myriad of different purposes, so there is a high likelihood that the
answers are give in completely different contexts, and hence could be
considered "wrong" for census purposes.

If those countries can do it, why can't we?

Can they do it as well as we do it? Do they do it for the same purpose?



--
Cheers,

John.

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