As the world celebrated the first World Statistics Day on 20th October, a group of statisticians conducts a funeral for the long-form census in a YouTube video. “We in Canada are in a unique position in this celebration,” said Don Mcleish, president, Statistical Society of Canada, “having boasted (according to the Economist magazine) one of the pre-eminent government statistical agencies in the world. Certain events, including cancellation of the long form census this past summer, have cast a shadow on the WSD celebration.”

The Statistics Society of Canada screened the 8-minute amateur video based on the irony of the inaugural World Statistics Day occurring in the year of the cancelled census. You can view this video on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntU3_x6PqpY.

The US Republican Party says that the American Community Survey is an expensive violation of privacy. The survey, which has replaced detailed questions in the census, is used extensively in public and business planning. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/20/us/politics/20census.html

 The UK government has with immediate effect cut the national survey which measures by area the emotional well being of children in England and their misuse use of drugs and alcohol amongst much else concerning their wellbeing. Details are at:

http://www.tellussurvey.org.uk/Default.aspx?AspxAutoDetectCookieSupport=1

 To quote from that:

 “Welcome to the Tellus Portal

The Government has decided to stop the delivery of the Tellus Survey as part of its commitment to reduce the burdens which data collection imposes on schools and local authorities. The decision is with immediate effect, which means the Tellus5 survey will not be delivered as planned in the Autumn Term.

“The Tellus portal will remain live until 17 September 2010 so that schools and local authorities who participated in Tellus4 can access their data using the online analysis tool and save or print a copy of the information that they want to keep beyond this date. ”

Local authorities can only access their data – not all the data – it will be lost. Deleting the historic record is maybe even worse than not collecting in the first place.

Although the initial plan for the 2011 Census was to carry out an improved version of the previous census in 2001 with a combination of a traditional census (with an exhaustive collection of information) and the use of information from administrative registers, the impact of the economic crisis has forced a revision of the whole census operation with fundamental changes in the methodology (it will finally be based on population and administrative information supplemented with the collection of new survey data) and a significant reduction in the number of census agents to do the fieldwork (from 42.000 in 2001 to 5.000 in 2011).

 News stories (only available in Spanish)

 http://www.cincodias.com/articulo/economia/recorte-gasto-publico-alcanza-estadisticas-INE/20100113cdscdieco_1/cdseco/

 http://www.cincodias.com/articulo/economia/INE-hara-nuevo-censo-poblacion-90-personal/20100219cdscdieco_2/cdseco/

July 2010. UK Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude proposed scrapping of the 2021 Census as a cost-cutting exercise. The information would be replaced by use of administrative records. Status seems to be that of a decision to review alternatives (as usual) but with expectation of change to significantly reduce costs.
Blog with link to news pieces http://bit.ly/bhkMFM

July 2010. Chief Statistician resigns after Canada’s Census long-form is to be abandoned in favour of an enlarged voluntary national survey. Government states privacy as reason.

News stories http://www.calgaryherald.com/news/StatsCan+boss+quits+over+census+mess/3305387/story.html

http://www.thespec.com/article/801140

Petition http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/keep-the-canadian-census-long-form.html

Public letter of protest http://www.progressive-economics.ca/2010/07/19/strange-bedfellows-invite-clement-to-work-with-them-towards-census-solution/

American Statistical Association protest http://www.amstat.org/about/pressreleases/ASACallsforLongFormReinstatement.pdf