Page 226 - Invited Paper Session (IPS) - Volume 2

IPS224 Jean-Michel Durr
The census communication campaign can also be used by the Government
to promote its achievements or policy, with the risk to reinforce the perception
of the population that the census is an administrative operation conducted by
the Government.

Processing
Governmental interference with the processing of census data is more
complex to witness. However, instructions given to the census agency
regarding the process of data editing can have consequences on the census
results, including population counts. In Bosnia-Herzegovina, the three
statistical agencies (Statistical office of the Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina,
Statistical office of Republika Srpska and National Agency for Statistics) did
not agree on the way to determine the resident status of enumerated persons,
based on their responses to several probing questions in the 2013 census
form. The situation with the three statistical agencies ultimately escalated into
the political and public debate, receiving broad attention in the country. After
more than one year of discussion, the Director of the Agency for Statistics took
the decision to implement the recommendations of the International
Monitoring Operation [4], which was still contested by one of the entities
statistical office, who decided to perform its own data processing and publish
its own figures, which at the end revealed to be close to the official ones.

Dissemination
Political interference can also occur during the dissemination phase, due
to the importance of census figures in the political and social context of a
country. As census population counts are often used to apportion seats in the
Parliament, or share public funds, they are of high importance for political
leaders. In addition, ethnic or religion distribution may have consequences on
the social balance of influence in a country.
As evidence of lack of independence of the census agency in the release
of census results, some countries have the practice to seek formal “approval”
by the President of the Republic on the census population counts, and
examples exist of non-approval leading either to non-publication of the results
or even possible alteration of the counts. Delay in the release of results is also
a way of depreciating census results.
The results of the census 2005 of Cameroon were released only in 2010
and were disputed. Census results, especially the distribution between the
Muslim North and the Christian South, have often sparked controversy in
Nigeria, and the results of the 2006 census were no exception [5]. The
provisional results of the 2006 census were released by the President in
January 2007 and immediately criticized, both on the level of the total

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