I must say that in the midst of the census discussion I was somewhat surprised that there wasn’t any evident attempt by the pro-census folks (of which I am one) to do a radical re-think of census information type gathering as you are hinting at below.
The problem of course was the way in which the Tories acted which was that it was their way or the highway rather than what would have been broadly useful and globally significant (particularly given Canada’s (former) very high global reputation in those areas) i.e. a major rethink of census type information use and appropriate ways in which that information could be derived of which the traditional census is of course only one.
M
From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of john whelan
Sent: February 28, 2015 11:45 AM
To: civicaccess discuss
Subject: Re: [CivicAccess-discuss] conservatives world wide are cancelling censuses!
From memory one basic idea is we (the government) have a lot of interaction with the population. So driving licence data is fairly current and that covers a lot of people, renewal every five years seems common. We have tax return data, etc etc.
Just data mine it and you get a surprising amount of data and with the new anti-terrorist legislation there is less objection to combining data on privacy grounds. Even in Canada some government data bases are combined for a specific application, this was actually approved by the privacy commissionaire.
Is it any less accurate than the census? Well to a conservative government does it matter? If there is no data then you can make decisions, currently they don't rely on civil servants to research etc anyway or certainly to the extent that we saw in the past. The census in any case is three years or so out of date on average anyway so from a data quality point of view it isn't quite as nice as we'd like it to be. Give me access to the provincial and municipal data bases as well as the federal ones including the tax data bases and I think the accuracy would be better.
Having worked at Stats on the census I once asked one of my staff who was unmarried had he filled his census form in yet? "No, they aren't interested in me." was the reply and they worked on the census so what hope for the rest of the country and its the ones who don't answer you're most interested in.
Cheerio John
On 28 February 2015 at 13:49, Michael Gurstein <[hidden email]> wrote:
Tks David,
Can you point to a place where there is a discussion/critique on censuses from a “conservative” perspective?
M
From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of David Eaves
Sent: February 28, 2015 10:21 AM
To: civicaccess discuss
Cc: Canadian Association of Public Data Users
Subject: Re: [CivicAccess-discuss] conservatives world wide are cancelling censuses!
The short answer to that is yes. There are several conservative "think tanks" and gatherings that advocate this move. If it feels coordinated (that word might be too strong), it's because it is.
--
@daeaves
Sent from my iPhone
On Feb 28, 2015, at 10:18 AM, Tracey P. Lauriault <[hidden email]> wrote:are these dudes all hangin' with each other or what?
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/abbott-government-considers-axing-the-australian-census-to-save-money-20150219-13ieik.html
--Tracey P. Lauriault
http://www.maynoothuniversity.ie/progcity/contributors/tracey-p-lauriault/
http://datalibre.ca/
@TraceyLauriault
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