IBGE launches today a whole new product of the 2010 Population Census, the National Address File for Statistical Purposes – CNEFE. The CNEFE is a list of around 78 million urban and rural addresses, which will support the household surveys of IBGE along this decade, by assisting in the selection of samples – households that will be visited during the survey – as well as in the follow-up of data collection operations. For the external public, the CNEFE will help municipalities, state and municipal planning agencies, and public and private statistics companies to produce surveys, conduct researches and perform emergency actions, among other functions. For example, it is possible to obtain, free of charge, all the addresses of a given district. The CNEFE can be accessed at link http://www.censo2010.ibge.gov.br/cnefe/

The National Address File is the first public file of this kind in Brazil. It was originally created in the 2000 Population Census, later improved in 2007 and then turned into a product of the 2010 Census:

78,056,411 urban and rural addresses, distributed along 316,574 enumeration areas and classified as residential units, educational units, hospital units and others. The Address File is a list that contains the addresses only (street name, number and complement, and coordinates in rural areas), with no additional economic or social information related to that address. The product has been developed under the international principle of confidentiality, in which "individual data collected by statistical offices for the production of statistics, related to either natural or legal persons, should be strictly confidential and exclusively used for statistical purposes."

The Address File should be used in larger scale by expert users.

As an example, a state statistical office may select a sample of households in a given municipality. In natural disasters like floods and landslides, municipalities may find out the number of residential units in that particular locality in order to better plan the actions of humanitarian aid. In the case of huge infrastructure projects, public agencies as well as public and private companies may use the Address File to assess the eventual number of affected households.

During data collection in the 2000 Population Census, the enumerators took to the field a printed map in order to guide the route and, along the way, take note of the addresses to apply the questionnaires; part of this list - the urban addresses - originated the Address File. In the 2007 census operation (Population Counting and Agriculture Census), part of the addresses were updated - except those from areas pertaining to 129 municipalities with more than 170 thousand inhabitants not included in the Population Counting -, having consolidated a list of more than 42 million addresses.

The biggest technological leap of the Address File was taken in the 2010 Census, by integrating the Territorial Base (urban and rural digital maps) to the Address File, allowing to geo-reference the localities.

During the operation, the enumerators went to the field carrying PDAs (handheld computers) containing the digital network of the urban areas with the addresses associated with the map, even being able to update them. The graphical files associated with the Address File will be made available by IBGE along 2012.