Census 2022

If I gave you a zip disk from 20 years ago would you be able to access the data on it, would you even know what it was?

One not on the internet

What does the notice look like?? That seems highly irregular. Only your enumerator or CSO should see or have in their possession your form. I would call the CSO and or the Garda to report that.

I'd have to have another look at it but it seems like an official gov.ie poster.

If components haven't failed and AC power still exists there is absolutely no reason it wouldn't.

Now, I don't expect components not to have failed.

Do you reckon all the software will continue to work in a century? Windows licensing and other license issues? Anti virus updates?

Be careful. He thinks he's an expert on databases too. :) There's also the problem of multilayer PCBs and the layers separating. One of the reasons that many of the older PCs and home computers still work (apart from component failure) is that the PCBs are often far simpler designs with fewer layers and operate at lower frequencies. There will always be techies trying to restore old equipment (old valve radios and TVs, old computers, old hardware etc).

The file format issue is one that is more problematic because it is, to some extent, hardware independent. A lot of data stored as PDFs can be downright iffy. Had to recover data from hundreds of domain name transaction reports that had been printed from Excel to PDF (oldest from 2001 and most recent from 2009), around 115K CSV files, and import them all into a database along with error checking. The format changed from report to report and even from page to page. As with most things, much of the time was spent on coding for errors. With stored data, as long as the file formatting specifications are available, it should not be a major problem but it is a lot of complex work to reconstruct data from archived files even with currently used formats.

The CSO data is easier to extract from the forms and once it is in digital format, it may be more robust and transferrable. However, the original documents may be maintained and those could be more robust than some currently used storage media. The census forms from the early 20th centrury were converted into images and merged with extracted census data and put online by the CSO. There is a massive difference between the 2022 census and those forms.

I've data on CDs and DVDs from about 20 years ago that are unreadable due to the layers on the discs either fading or bubbling and splitting. With mechanical harddrives, there may be some issues with the lubrication having solidified but that's a comparatively minor problem. Technology is often more robust than people expect. USB memory sticks and flashdrives may not be so robust.

Regards...jmcc

The results.

One thing to note is that the census doesn't include derelict or inhabitable housing stock, but does include housing unoccupied at the time of the census due to being for sale, on the rental market, or under renovation. That skews the figures and doesn't reflect reality.

Well you can pump money into them and bring them back into use, whereas reporting houses that are temporarily vacant because they're on the market or being renovated gives the impression of more houses being left idle.

Do you think that those who've been running the survey for decades might know more about how best to run it, compared to say, people who have no experience of running national surveys? There's more to a survey than online forms. There are good reasons to do surveys in person, depending on the nature of the survey.