The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) is seeking a new partner to provide a digital Census in 2021, following the spectacular failure of the IBM solution in 2016.

The ABS reported an $A24 million budget blow-out in 2016 — four per cent of its total planned expenses — which it directly attributed to the outage of the website designed to receive responses.

ABS General Manager Census and Statistical Services Division Chris Libreri said the ABS was seeking highly experienced suppliers to provide the 2021 Census digital service.

“The ABS will work closely with interested suppliers to confirm proposed solutions can deliver high standards of security, reliability and capacity required for the 2021 Census.

“The need to keep all Census information secure and confidential is, as always, a primary and paramount factor in designing the digital Census. The ABS is actively managing risks (including cyber) for the 2021 Census and is engaging independent experts to provide assurance on the solution, including the Digital Transformation Agency and the Australian Cyber Security Centre.

“The aim is to design an online service that is simple and safe to use for all Australians. People who want or need paper forms will also have easy access to them,” Mr Libreri said.

The ABS said that notwithstanding the regrettable period of outage of the online form in 2016, those who used it found it quick and easy, reducing the time taken by households to complete the Census by 70 per cent compared to paper, and at all times data remained secure.

ABS Chief Information Officer Steve Hamilton said the ABS has a strong preference for the Census Digital Service to be hosted in a cloud environment, in line with both the Australian Government’s cloud-first policy and the Digital Transformation Agency’s Secure Cloud Policy.

“We are seeking to provide an engaging and secure service hosted on cost effective and proven cloud infrastructure that delivers the experience, performance and resilience expected by all Australians when transacting online", he said.

Any cloud services will be Australian government accredited through an Information Security Registered Assessor’s Program (IRAP) assessment and any services that handle sensitive data will operate within Australia. This type of service was successfully used for the Australian Marriage Law Postal Survey in 2017.

Tenders are due in October 2018 with an industry briefing to follow, and a supplier to be announced in mid-2019. 

For further information regarding the Census visit http://www.abs.gov.au/census .