IBM helps ABS build eCensus program

Stan Beer
Thursday, 17 August 2006 19:10

Your IT - Home IT

IBM and the Australian Bureau of Statistics today announced that more than 720,000 households across Australia (including Australian bases in Antarctica) had submitted their Census forms via the web-based eCensus program.
 

Usage of the eCensus application, designed, built and hosted for ABS by IBM Australia, peaked between 8pm and 9pm on Census night, August 8, during which more than 72,000 online forms were received. During the 24-hour period of August 8, eCensus delivered more than 12.5 million page views.

During the peak period, an estimated 55,000 households logged on simultaneously  at 8.47pm on August 8.

According to IBM, research on web-based census initiatives points to several benefits compared with traditional paper-based response mechanisms, including increased accessibility for the vision-impaired, reduced reliance on field collectors, fewer spoilt forms, as well as more efficient statistical processing.

Glen Boreham, CEO and General Manager for IBM Australia and New Zealand, believes the eCensus program will help the ABS more accurately measure key characteristics of the Australian population, and in turn allow for better planning of services and facilities across the country.

"This is the first time the internet has been used to capture information about Australia on such a scale," said Mr Boreham. "Capturing data online has the potential to greatly reduce the Census' logistics burden, and to dramatically speed up the collection and processing of data."

"This innovation has the potential to save taxpayers funds and, in-line with the purpose of the Census, to enable Australia's researchers and planners to better address the future needs of our community."

"The ubiquity of the internet, combined with the information management and processing capabilities it enables, make eCensus a logical progression in the development of the Census program," said Peter Clark, assistant director for the eCensus project.

"The eCensus allows ABS to fully leverage the internet in the task of building the national statistical resource and to define that essential snapshot of how Australians live."

"IBM's expertise in building and hosting secure, robust web applications around the eCensus was an important ingredient in helping us conduct the Census as a whole."

"The majority of feedback the ABS has received on this initiative from people completing their Census form online has been very positive."

IBM's role in the eCensus project dates back to December 2004, when it was contracted to design, build, test and deploy a web-based application to enable online submissions for Census 2006. Under the agreement, IBM is also hosting the eCensus application, using scalable infrastructure within its secure data centre network.

IBM teams from across Australia have been engaged on the eCensus project, ranging from application developers and testers in the Victorian regional center of Ballarat, to architects and project managers in Brisbane. IBM has also drawn on the experience of its global Special Events Hosting and High Performance Application teams to ensure the project, the first of its kind within Australia, runs smoothly.

The application was custom-built using IBM DB2 and WebSphere software, hosted on IBM's Power 5 server technology. Key components include WebSphere Application Server, DB2 Universal Database High Availability Disaster Recovery, Rational Application Developer and Tivoli Monitoring.

To meet availability, scalability and security requirements a System P server solution was deployed, using Power5 chip architecture and an AIX operating system.

IBM hosted the eCensus application using a fully redundant, high availability, fault tolerant platform in one of its network of secure data centres across Australia. Both ABS and IBM support teams have been monitoring the system 24-hours a day using automated monitoring technology to ensure that problems are identified and rectified without impacting users, and that the application has sufficient capacity at all times.

Earlier this year, IBM played a major role in the Canadian national census, providing the infrastructure and applications for the Internet Response and Census Help Lines Channels, in which over 2 million forms were completed using the internet.

The eCensus web site can be found at www.census.abs.gov.au.