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Why are we stuck on Census 1.0?

Millions of Australians sat down this week to give the government a snapshot of what the country looks like and what its citizens are up to, but I don't think the census went far enough with its line of questioning.
Written by Luke Hopewell, Contributor

Millions of Australians sat down this week to give the government a snapshot of what the country looks like and what its citizens are up to, but I don't think the census went far enough with its line of questioning.

The census had the opportunity to shine a light on so much more than just the age, ancestry and job status of almost 22 million Australians. The online version of the census presented a great opportunity to add extra questions about technology.

There was only one technology question in the census, and it was about whether I had access to the internet at my house. Shame, Australian Bureau of Statistics, shame.

Your census could have shone a light on how many Aussies prefer Mac and how many prefer PC, or it could have asked how many of us actually want the National Broadband Network.

Such questions would have done Australians a service too, because then we'd be able to have concrete statistics to fall back on when spats erupt between technology companies.

Apple and Android, for example, are constantly at war over their activation figures around the world. With a tech census, we could have cleared such problems right up. It's tech stat reliability that we need.

Without it, a technology company could just as easily get 10 people together, ask them a question and use that as their primary statistic for the next major advertising campaign.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) had the opportunity to clear up these foggy tech statistics for us, to give us an accurate representation of how people use what technology. But they didn't. And I'm disappointed.

Next time, ABS. Next time.

Watch the video to see the results of Nerdcam's very first census.

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