[clive milne]

in the 2001 census results, just over 73,000 people described themselves as Jedi, which is more people than identified as Salvation Army or Seventh Day Adventists, and only slightly fewer than those who listed their religion as Judaism.

If census data can be so easily skewed by a bunch of Star Wars fans, the potential impact of enough people being sufficiently concerned about safeguarding their privacy to contemplate providing inaccurate responses, or not responding at all, should surely make the ABS think twice about this proposal.

And what happens to other nationally-important data collections that don’t have the force of law behind them? The ABS’s review did not consider how a loss of public trust in the census might impact on some people’s willingness to accept or embrace other government projects, such as the new My Health Record, if they fear the linking of that data with their census records.

I am surprised that the many stakeholders who seek to use census data, or indeed the agencies which run any other major government programs, are apparently willing to risk the integrity of the data on which they rely. Or perhaps, like the rest of us, they were too busy in the week before Christmas to notice that our privacy protections were being wrenched away.

The ABS’s privacy review noted that it faces the risk that this proposal “may cause public concern which results in a reduction of participation levels in ABS collections, and/or a public backlash”. Its suggestions for mitigating that risk are mostly focused on PR efforts to calm us all down, but it also says that the ABS will “reconsider the privacy design for the proposal, if required”.

Which means that there is still hope, that with enough public pressure, the ABS itself – or at least the governments, businesses and charities which care about the reliability of census data – will see this proposal for the folly it is, and return to a census format designed to ensure both the integrity of our data, and the protection of our privacy.

https://www.efa.org.au/2016/03/23/jedi-census/