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Online census begins despite glitches
Polling the peeps: Employees of Statistics Indonesia work at the 2020 census call center in Jakarta on Monday
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Polling the peeps: Employees of Statistics Indonesia work at the 2020 census call center in Jakarta on Monday. (JP/Seto Wardhana)
The 2020 population census by Statistics Indonesia (BPS) has started. The online phase, which is expected to ease access for public participation across the country, has begun, but glitches have plagued the launch.
Less than a week after the online census started, some residents, such as those in North Sumatra where authorities aim to have 20 percent of residents, 3 million people, taking part in the online census, encountered slow webpage loading when people attempted to fill in the online form.
Mukhamad Mukhanit from BPS’ North Sumatra office said it was because the servers unexpectedly became overloaded when multiple people accessed the website at the same time.
"We received many complaints, including slow webpage load times and downed connections. We have forwarded these concerns [to the BPS central office]," he said on Sunday.
Unlike past censuses, the 2020 census uses both door-to-door interviews and an online platform, the first time the decennial census has gone digital since its inception in 1961.
The online census is available from Feb. 15 to March 31 via sensus.bps.go.id. Citizens need their family card (KK) and ID card (NIK) numbers to complete the online registration. The online census is to be followed by a door-to-door census and phone interviews in July for those who do not or cannot access the online census.
The online questionnaire has a total of 22 questions, ranging from the registrant's name, date of birth, place of birth, religion, education level and occupation. The online census also asks residents for their current addresses, as well as the addresses on their ID cards, even if they currently reside and work elsewhere.
BPS spokeswoman Endang Retno Sri Subiya Andani said the census would also be used to update the civil registration data. Citizens who are found to have no civil documents during field interviews will be referred to the Home Ministry for registration.
Amelia Rizky, a 20-year-old college student in West Jakarta, has filled in the online census for her family, including her mother and father, who have just moved from their first house in Tangerang, Banten — which is also their current ID card address — to a newly purchased second house in West Jakarta. The family opted for the online census as they did not want to change their ID card addresses.
“With only one login ID we can complete [the census] for the whole family, so we don’t have to repeat it again. It also caters to the needs of people with current addresses different from their ID card addresses, like us,” Amelia said.
Security was the only concern for Amelia when entering her family’s information on the online form. “Nowadays, data theft is a major concern, and here [on the online census] we are talking about birth certificates, employment and other sensitive data,” she said.
The online census comes amid an absence of data protection laws in Indonesia.
Wahyudi Djafar, a researcher at the Institute for Policy Research and Advocacy, said that although the online census had received a pass from the National Cyber and Encryption Agency, BPS still needs to take precautions to protect data. “The system may be safe, but there is still a possibility [of a data breach],” Wahyudi said.
The BPS has set a budget of Rp 4 trillion (US$292.9 million) for the 2020 census, compared to the reported Rp 3.3 trillion in 2010. It is planning to hire about 390,000 volunteers starting in early April to help with the census fieldwork in July. “Our initial target is to have 23 percent of the census carried out online nationwide. If we can reach more than that, it would even reduce the cost of the census,” Endang said.
The 2020 census is expected to help Indonesia keep track of its demographic dividend, which the country is expected to benefit from with its huge working-age population — projected to reach 70 percent of the total population by 2030. A 2015 intercensal survey projected that Indonesia would have a population of about 266.9 million in 2019, which may leap to 319 million by 2045.
University of Indonesia Demographic Institute associate director I Dewa Gede Karma Wisana said the 2020 census was a step to improve demographic analysis. “With that data integration, we can expect better policy interventions from the central government and regional administrations,” he said.
