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Experiences and Lessons▶
1. Project Planning and Management2. Geospatial Mapping and EA Database3. Enumeration Instruments and Tools4. Data Capture and Management5. Census Testing and Pilots6. Recruitment and Training7. Deployment and Supervision8. Enumeration and Logistics9. Quality Assurance and Risk Management10. Census Analysis and Products11. Partnerships and Collaboration12. Advocacy and Publicity13. Procurement and Financial Management14. Post-Enumeration Survey15. Alternative Approaches16. Planning Checklist
Case Studies▶
1. Project Planning and Management2. Geospatial Mapping3. Enumeration Instruments4. Data Capture5. Census Testing6. Recruitment and Training7. Deployment and Supervision8. Enumeration and Logistics9. Quality Assurance10. Census Analysis11. Partnerships12. Advocacy13. Procurement14. Post-Enumeration Survey15. Alternative Approaches16. Planning Checklist
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Lessons Learnt​

Countries identified some key lessons during the operationalisation of the tool’s development process, and these include:

  • When there is high demand for inclusion of several questions from various stakeholders this causes delays in the process of completing the development of the questionnaires; therefore, the NSO should be prepared with the UN P&R for PHCs to be able to get solutions and satisfy the users. Otherwise, the enumeration will take longer and is likely to become more costly. For instance, countries that took on too many questions for the cartographic mapping questionnaire experienced delays and failed to achieve the set timelines.

  • In a digital census, not all populations will be enumerated using a tablet, therefore, all paper questionnaires should be well formatted and ready for printing when the need arises. For instance, Kenya realised after the pilot census and various pretests that enumeration of persons in hotels and lodges had to be undertaken using hard copy short questionnaires. This was because of the logistical challenge of visiting this population in their rooms, bearing in mind that they had to be enumerated strictly in the morning of the reference night.

  • Insufficient time allocated to software development can be disastrous in terms of halfhearted outputs that lead to poor quality data, loss of time and money among others. It is therefore important to give sufficient time to develop and test the census system, the software manager must give the time needed to develop the system. Namibia had to postpone a pilot testing because the time allocated for application development was too short, resulting from a plan that fixed the pilot census dates without due consideration of the time required for development and finalisation of the questionnaire application.

  • The questionnaires and instruction manual if not developed and tested concurrently can lead to delays and disrupted training if they are not yet in tandem. For instance, Namibia realised that they could not proceed with a pilot test because both instruction manuals for questionnaire and application had a lot of changes coming up during the Master training and a decision was made to postpone training, go back and redo timelines, which allowed sufficient time for the tool’s development and testing.