[LINK] Census stuff(ed)

[Roger Clarke]

At 15:50 +1000 13/8/16, David Lochrin wrote:
>I wonder whether the whole census concept should be re-architected?
>Much of the information could be supplied from existing government databases without going near the public Internet (ATO, Immigration, Health, state databases such as births, deaths, and marriages, etc.).  Some of it, such as personal income, would probably be more reliable.

Um, that's what Kalisch proposed to do in the first place.

As head of AIHW, he presided over wholesale expropriation of personal health care data, and since leveraging himself into the ABS gig in late 2014, his intention has been to expropriate personal data from every agency he can get approval for, preferably all of them.

The SLK is the 2016 version of the 1986 Australia Card number.


I drew attention to this in March, on this site and on the privacy list:
http://www.rogerclarke.com/DV/Census-2016.html#2016B


The Herald this morning reported:
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/code-red-how-the-bureau-of-statistics-bungled-the-2016-census-20160811-gqqpxf.html
>
>The Bureau wanted to build a reputation as Australia's "premier integrator
>of government data". If it couldn't retain names and addresses, potential
>users might see it as "unnecessarily constraining itself and therefore
>constraining whole-of-government data integration".
>
>"There are many administrative datasets that are likely to have
>considerable statistical value," the report said. "In addition to the
>personal income tax data which has already been used in data integration
>projects, future data integration projects could include the use of welfare
>payments data, Centrelink unemployment benefits data, Medicare and
>Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme data, Australian Immunisation Register, the
>electoral roll, and other nationally important datasets."
>
>The report envisioned no limit on what the ABS could link and charge for,
>so long as the names and addresses themselves were kept within the ABS.
>Information from the census on ethnic or religious backgrounds could be
>linked to information from the immunisation register to work out what type
>of families on what types of incomes were the least likely to immunise.
>
>Criminal records could be linked to census records, if permission were
>given, to see what sort of Australians were convicted of what sort of
>crimes.


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Roger Clarke                                 http://www.rogerclarke.com/
			             
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Visiting Professor in the Faculty of Law            University of N.S.W.
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