Counting people in the data revolution era: challenges and opportunities for population censuses

Changes in technology, society and individual behaviours are having impressive effects on data production and use. Social networks, sensors and data infrastructure are generating a massive amount of new data (big data, big corpora, linked data, open data, etc.) that are readily available for the analysis of societies. Official statistics too is starting to pay attention to these unofficial data sources, to the aim of using them within the production processes. Despite the potentials of new data for statistical production, so far we can depict two main effects on official statistics, and especially on population censuses. First of all, there is the digitalization of data construction through both new instruments (e.g. web questionnaires) and new means of collection (e.g. tablets). Furthermore, the integration and the scaling-up of data archives is ongoing. This transition from the traditional ‘door-to-door’ census to new census methods, which make an higher use of technology, is not only a technical result, but it reflects the extent to which digital data are changing the routines of production of statistics and their use to gain social knowledge.