Purpose

The purpose of this report is to summarise the feedback we received about the Preliminary view of 2018 Census content. Our engagement and consultation included a formal submission period, an online discussion forum, and face-to-face workshops. The report summarises feedback received from all three collection methods.

This report will inform final decisions about 2018 Census content, to be published in 2017.

Summary

Determining census content is one of the first steps in each census cycle. To determine content for the 2018 Census we have proactively engaged and consulted with our customers. We used new methods to find out what customers think about our proposed content, and received feedback from a wide range of people. The feedback provided useful insights about each topic and the needs of our customers.

In the engagement and consultation on our preliminary view of census content:

• 226 people participated in the online engagement
• 176 people made formal submissions
• 128 people attended the face-to-face workshops.

This report summarises the submissions, online discussions, and comments we received from workshop participants. The two topics that received the most feedback were ones we recommended excluding from the 2018 Census. Gender identity had the most online comments (163) and unpaid activities received the most submissions (59).

We are now evaluating the feedback using our content determination framework.

The results will help us in our next steps to determining content for the 2018 Census. We plan to make our final decisions soon after running a complete test of our processes, systems, and questionnaires in 2017. This is later in the census cycle than usual, to allow for more extensive testing of census content.