Disk Census
Households not yet enumerated should call Disk Census 137
December 27, 2022 10h00 AM | Last Updated: December 27, 2022 01h00 PM
Residents of households where nobody answered the 2022 Census should call Disk Census 137, which attends every state in Brazil from today (27) onwards. The service will be available in the municipalities on a progressive basis, according to the progress of the data collection in each place. Click here to check whether the Disk Census is available in your municipality.
The call is free of charge and can be made from any landline or cellular telephone every day from 8 AM to 9:30 PM.
With more than 80% of the population enumerated, the final step of the data collection should be streamlined through telephone, which counts with 120 census agents. The Census data collection began in August 2022 with IBGE enumerators visiting every household.
Launched on November 30 in Piauí and Sergipe, two states where the data collection is in the final step, Disk Census 137 is an unprecedented initiative in the history of the IBGE´s population censuses. The service has already received more than 430 calls up to December 23.
137 is a telephone number made available to the IBGE by the Brazilian National Telecommunications Agency (Anatel) and it is considered a utility service. Calls are received by attendants in a call center specific for this service. To attend the public, the IBGE counts with 120 census agents of surveys by telephone working every day from 8 AM to 9:30 PM (including weekends and holidays).
“With Disk Census, the IBGE aims at providing a service to the population so as any person not enumerated claims this right and avoids staying out of the 2022 Census, thus guaranteeing a more precise coverage of the territory,” states Maria Lucia Vieira, the IBGE´s Deputy Director of Surveys.
When receiving a call, the attendants ask the resident to certify that no other person living in the household answered the Census, because just one resident might provide information for all of them. In case the resident confirms that nobody in the household answered it, the call goes on and the attendant asks the address for checking.
After checking the database, the attendant informs the resident whether that address was visited or not. If the household was visited, the information is passed on to the resident and the call is finished. In case the address was not visited, the attendant will inform that an enumerator will go in person to the household.
“No information in the questionnaire is passed on to the caller, neither the names of other residents of that address are mentioned,” highlights Larissa Catalá, Deputy Coordinator of the Census Support Center (CAC). According to her, during the 13 days that the service was available only in Piauí and Sergipe, 114 calls were received, 95 of them related to residents not enumerated. In these cases, “warnings” are open for local teams so as to contact the residents and schedule a date to visit the household.
On December 12, the states of Alagoas and Rio Grande do Norte were included and the attendance increased. In the week when only those four states were attended, 172 warnings were registered, of which 155 were related to persons not enumerated.
“By opening to several Brazilian municipalities on December 19, it was possible to attend 147 residents up to December 23, of which 142 had not answered the Census. So we moved from an average of 10 attendances per day (when the service was available for only two states) to nearly 25 (when the service was available for four states) and, most recently, to nearly 30 (when the service was available for several municipalities from several states). We expect that the calls increase significantly over the next weeks,” concludes Catalá.
