Census 2022: Problems with data processing

Data processing problems in the IT infrastructure of the Census 2022 at the Federal Statistical Office led in recent days to households in Jena, but also throughout Germany, receiving a written reminder to participate in the household survey of the Census 2022, although it has already been completed.

The city of Jena also sent out more than 650 reminders to citizens last week. How many people had already filled out the survey at that time cannot be ascertained. For this reason, the city asks that citizens who have already filled out the survey consider the letter as irrelevant. They do not have to do anything. Citizens who have not yet completed the survey are kindly requested to comply with the reminder.

Background



Currently, the household survey for the 2022 Census is also being conducted in Jena. About 10 percent of the households are visited by survey officers. In addition to personal information such as first name, last name and address, information on gender, nationality and marital status is also requested. It is also necessary to state how many people live in the household and whether there is a secondary residence. For some respondents, the survey has already ended at this point. If a household has been selected for the survey of additional characteristics (living and working situation, nationality and immigration, education and training), each household member will then receive access data to enter these characteristics independently via an online questionnaire. A request for a paper questionnaire is also possible.



Last week, the Federal Statistical Office announced that there had been problems with the transmission of the online questionnaires. Due to technical problems at the Federal Statistical Office, the survey agencies were unable to access the incoming data and for this reason it was also not possible to allocate the data to the respondents. As a result, the survey offices did not receive any news about the successful completion of the survey of these persons. For this reason, many households found a reminder letter from the survey office in their mailbox, even though they had already completed the survey online.



The Federal Statistical Office is currently working flat out to correct the error.