2020 Census
Meeting of Consultative Commission discusses topics and operational aspects
June 25, 2018 10h00 AM | Last Updated: June 27, 2018 10h38 AM
The first meeting of the Consultative Commission of the 2020 Demographic Census was held on June 14 in Rio de Janeiro, with the objective of presenting the questionnaire, the technical and methodological aspects and the work program of the Commission for the 2018-2021 period. The commission is made up of experts on Statistics, Demography, Geography, Sociology and Economics, who give support to the conduction of the greatest sociodemographic survey in the country.
The meeting gathered the IBGE President, Roberto Olinto Ramos, the Director of Survey, Claudio Crespo, and of Geosciences, João Bosco de Azevedo, the General Coordinator of the Center for Information Documentation and Dissemination, David Wu Tai, the Census Operational Coordinator, Maria Vilma Garcia and the Technical Management Coordinator of the Population Census, Luciano Duarte.
Professors Cláudio Dedecca (Unicamp), Cláudio Egler (UFRJ), Eduardo Rios Neto (UFMG), José Alberto de Carvalho (UFMG) and Marcelo de Toledo Vieira (UFJF) were also present at the meeting together with Diana Reiko Sawyer, Research Coordinator at the International Policy Center for Inclusive Growth (IPC-IG).
Transparency and democratic participation
Coordinator Luciano Dutra explained that the Council is the second of the three consultative instances used to give transparency to the census operation and to enable broad participation. The first one was the public consultation on the IBGE website, which occurred from February 19 to May 15 and received more than three thousand suggestions. And the third instance is the meeting with information users, scheduled for October of this year, and for which public and private managers, as well as representatives of the Academy, will be invited.
Coordinator Maria Vilma Garcia opened the meeting presenting the advertising video of the 2020 Population Census, which ends with the slogan "a country that knows itself has no option but to win". Next, President Roberto Olinto stressed the importance of the Commission to open up discussions on three fronts: formulating a sound technical project for the Census, showing the need of competitive examinations to overcome staff shortage, especially in some agencies of IBGE, and making an effort towards budget approval, which will be nearly R$3.4 billion.
Budget and size of the operation
Maria Vilma Garcia also presented the operational aspects and budget of the 2020 Census and said that 60% of the necessary resources are destined to staff payments, whereas 24% are to regular expenses, 11% to investments and 4% to advertising. Such proportion is similar to the one used in the 2010 Census.
Discussion about the topics
During the discussions throughout the day, almost everyone agreed that the identification of the respondents’ birth dates (day, month and year, protected by statistical confidentiality) together with a questionnaire as concise as possible will represent a breakthrough. Labor and Income is one of the topics that will reduce its questions, since the Continuous PNAD, now with national coverage, already addresses many of the investigated aspects.
Census collection test and public consultation on the Internet
The results of the Census collection on the Internet and of the public consultation were also presented. As to the questionnaire completion on the Internet, the return was considered good both for the online answers and telephone follow-ups. In 2010, the public consultation had been carried out through mail sent to nine thousand addresses, of which 270 (3%) answered. However, this time, with the consultation open to institutions and the general public, there were 3,198 answers.
Coordinator Luciano Duarte considers that the result of the first public consultation on the Internet was a step forward, since the IBGE had never listened so openly to society before. According to him, the suggestions revealed the latest demands of society, helping to establish priorities. “Now we are going through the data-mining process, which is an initial assessment of the most common suggestions. We realized that the initial results help us prioritize topics and take decisions on which of them is more important than the others and, in addition, we can think of other surveys to cover topics that the Census does not comprise”, he explains.
The next meeting of the 2020 Population Census Consultative Commission is scheduled for October.
