By Stephen Pate – Every Canadian household will soon get the 2016 Census but the program that runs it has a massive fail. You must know all the answers to the questions before you start but what the questions will be is a mystery.
Statistics Canada is back in the game of counting Canadians after the Harper Conservatives gutted the long form census but the program has a major bug out of the gate.
Statistics Canada wants all Canadian households to fill in the census form online and the forms started arriving in the mail today.
That’s progressive except they don’t seem to have beta tested the system in a real world scenario. Unless you improbably know all the answers to all the unknown questions in advance, you cannot fill out the census form in a single online session.
Instead of a printed form, Statistics Canada sent each home an envelope with a letter, “16-digit security code” and a web address to fill in the form online. You can also call a phone number to get a printed form but you can’t inexplicably send an email request.
Anyone who has tried to get Service Canada or CRA on the phone knows how hard it is to talk to someone in the Canadian government. Harper downsized the government to the point of long phone queues.
Filling out the form is harder than you would expect. There are multiple screens after the security code. Who lives there? They want names and then their birth dates.
You can’t save the part of the form you have and wait to collect the missing answers. Each computer session is lost until you get the screen filled in correctly.
Get stumped? Write down the question and go get the answers. When you come back the computer will have timed out which is probably a security feature.
You can’t even prepare for the next set of questions until you get there. I got 50% through the form and was missing a birth date. When I get that information I can move to the next screen with no idea what the question is and if I will know the answer.
That’s just plain dumb. It’s like those Canada Revenue Agency PDF forms that can’t be saved. CRA got past that goof after several years.
Statistics Canada Census 2016 site down for maintenance
I see Statistics Canada has taken down their site for “Maintenance”. Hopefully they’ve spotted this bug and are trying to fix it.
This will be a mess. People trying to call for the printed form will jam the phones. People trying to fill out the form online are beta testing the program.
We only the short form to fill out. God help anyone who has to fill out the long form census one screen at a time.
Statistics Canada will hire 25,000 people to help them take the census at a cost of $715 million.
The Toronto Star reported “Failure to fill out one of the forms could lead to a fine of $500, up to three months in jail, or both.” Wonder what the penalty is for failure to design the form that people can use?
Edited May 3, 2016 7:50 AM
Intelligence
If you find it hard to fill out these forms, perhaps you need a psychiatrist because you don’t know who you are or where you live. It was pretty simple. A couple of brain cells is all that is required. I wonder what the fine is for writing stupid bios. Stephen Pate’s bio says “HE is a great WIFE…” Sensationalist, incompetent journalists are far more annoying than the Statcan census.
Stephen Pate
The online form asked for birth dates of tenants at the 50% mark. They weren’t home so I had to end not save the session and start all over. Visit to mental health professional would not have solved the problem.
Thanks for the amusing take on the spelling error the bio. Obviously “has” a great wife reads better than is, although I could be in a same sex relationship but not.
The new format posts the bio at the bottom of each story. I’ll have to pay more attention.
Intelligence
Men in same sex marriages generally don’t refer to their male partner as a wife. Typically they are both husbands. the very definition of “Wife” is a FEMALE spouse. So unless someone identifies as female, they won’t be calling themselves a wife. I also still find it odd that someone wouldn’t expect to have to provide personal details about people with whom one shares a dwelling, but whatever. What was your goal with this article? It was neither valuable nor intelligent, in my opinion. It seems to me that it is nothing more than sensationalist crap designed to polarize people against an organization that happens to be one of the best statistics organizations in the world. No organization is perfect, valuable statistics is important, but point out something that is worth criticizing. Statcan needs us to keep them honest, for sure, but this article, in my opinion, just points out your own ignorance. Do you even know why the census is so important to our country and should be important to every one of us? I don’t work there, but I am educated on what the value of information like census data is. It helps governments properly allocate the taxes they collect so that they know, for example, that a new school needs to be built in my community. If they don’t know the demographics of that community, how are they to plan? — this banter is valuable I suppose though… it helps educate people and no press is bad press in the end. At least you know one person read the article!
Stephen Pate
Some people like to comment like Barack Obama. Some people like to be Donald Trump.