It is important to know why ABS does not need the name or address of each individual to do what the community expects as benefits resulting from such an activity. I am not simplifying anything that ABS, in this case, is trying to achieve. I want ABS to know that the census data it collects will be as good as the data it collects without the names.
Let us take a simple example of guessing jelly beans in a jar. It does not matter who has put what color jelly beans in the jar. If it matters to know the number of colored beans in the jar matches the population of who has put it. It is more likely that jelly beans will be jelly beans if people are not asked their identity to be revealed when they are asked to put the jelly beans in the jar. We don’t want anything else but the jelly beans put in the jar, right?. How can this be done in 21st century?
ABS has been collecting these jelly beans data for years. But the circumstance under which it wants to collect the data has changed dramatically. What once deemed to be safely tucked away with the government is not any more. What once deemed to be encrypted strongly enough to decrypt is not any more. Nations are adjusting to the requirements as attacks on an individual’s privacy and identity increase in numbers and intensity. Protection mechanisms do exist and can be modified as time changes. For example,social security numbers in USA are not revealed fully to identify all 9 digits even when an identity of a person needs to be verified.
ABS generates a unique numbers and sends it out per residence. Change that to reflect the individuals at the residence. Make sure only one person puts one jelly bean per residence. It is important for ABS to look at the all jelly beans in that jar to represent the census as accurately as possible. These numbers will now act like virtual credit card number used to shop on the internet without revealing the actual credit card number. It can be made more secure by attaching a pin to that number to ensure that the jar’s contents are not hijacked.
ABS can now actually count the jelly beans in those jars without any guesswork and those jelly beans can be tracked and stored for years without jeopardizing the privacy or identity of those individuals (jelly beans) who are diligently complying with the census requirements. Now they can do that without compromising their privacy or identity to the hackers.
With much of the data collected change rapidly, ABS can adopt some of the following recommendations to make sure census data in 21st century becomes more accurate without a need to scrub the data:
- Abolish the requirement of giving the names to make people provide other information with confidence
- Ask for age or age range than specific age or date of birth
- Ask for income range than specific income details
- Ask to provide accurately the information on the number of people deemed to be at the residence usually than making the guests to comply
- More importantly, provide security to the new generation (who are already at risk of being compromised because of their open attitude) to protect them from financial, social and identity losses.