Online census draws a third of the country
"At last a computer system that does work properly."
Featured commentA third of the country has so far gone online to fill out census forms.
Statistics minister Maurice Williamson shared what he termed the “excellent news” in a tweet at 9 o’clock last night.
Yesterday, when the online responses had cracked one million by midday, he told NBR ONLINE he was “bloody happy”.
So, cracking the 1.5 million mark, Mr Williamson could not contain his excitement, asking his Twitter followers last night “how good is that?!”
People filling out their census forms officially have until mid-April to complete them and Mr Williamson’s office is expecting a few more thousand online responses before then.
Back to home
Back to top
Print
Latest
NBR SERVICES
SUBSCRIPTIONS
Sign up for NBR subscriber content or email alerts
Comments and questions7
Not that good considering the way Kiwis take to online services that work well. What woild have been "bloody good" was for a minister to ensure that the website could actually have handled the demand and not wasted customer time. He would have got at least 50% then.
WE had no problem accessing the site during the evening, the expected high load period.
At last a computer system that does work properly.
There were a few UI issues that should be fixed for next time.
If you ask for my birth date, why do you need to ask if I am over 15?
Why did the address not pre populate, like typing an address into Google maps, which would saved some typing and have added the post code as well.
Plus the questions seemed limited.
- No questions on diet, alcohol or exercise.
- No questions on KiwiSaver, investments, savings.
These would be far more useful than religion, which I assume is only in there for historical purposes.
It is only asked every 5 years so the extra burden would not be that great.
also
- if my birthdate shows I'm only 2 (my son) then I shouldn't have to answer later that I'm under 5.
- agree addresses should prepopulate from the dwelling form or from other individual forms already completed.
Small points though - overall I thought it worked well.
Also - next time it would be good to remove the paper copies altogether for people who want to do it online. We could save a small forest. This could be logistically tricky as they'll be worried that someone will lose their internet connection at the critical moment.
They should be targetting 3m or so online forms next time.
Lets hope we can vote at the next national election via internet voting