Code Red: How the Bureau of Statistics bungled the 2016 census

At what ought to have been the height of preparations for the 2016 census, its head, Duncan Young, sent his colleagues in the Bureau of Statistics executive a crisis memo.

“As most of you are aware, the census program has alerted its steering committee and board that it has assessed its status as RED,” he wrote in February.

He put the word “RED” in capital letters.

“This means that we have assessed that the program will not be able to deliver on the current scope, timetable and/or budget. This status is as a consequence of both budget reductions since program commencement and program delays during 2014.”

Young set out five options to shrink the census or save money, each “not taken lightly”. One was to ask far fewer questions, another was to reach fewer people.

At the same time the Bureau’s newly installed chief, David Kalisch, was war-gaming an even grander solution. Dubbed “Project Archer” after Keith Archer, the Australian Statistician who introduced computers to the ABS in the 1960s, it would make the 2016 census go away, freeing up $200 million to $400 million to upgrade the Bureau’s aging computer systems, some of which ran code that was 30 years old …

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Peter Martin, The Age