Lessons learnt

There have been challenges in data transmission with not all data correctly received at the data centre. This causes problems with census undercount if enumerated households are missing from the census data. Alternatively, if the problem is caught and the households renumerated, this can cause duplication in the census data. These challenges are often caused by poor internet connectivity. Ensure that you have a strategy for dealing with loss of connectivity such as an off-line solution that securely stores the data until there is a good enough Wi-Fi signal for transmission to be completed.

There is a need to have a high-speed bandwidth considering that multiple tablets (as many as 200) may be connecting to the network simultaneously with each one downloading files of considerable size. Experience from Kenya suggests using devices that support a bandwidth of 10Gbps to achieve an overall speed of 10Gbps bandwidth throughout the network.

Botswana had no clear work cycle that systematically shows the flow and management of issues during enumeration, the issues coming though were resolved by either GPS specialist, IT System Support or Census Technical Officers and there was no mechanism to tell whether an issue had been closed or not.

Consideration should be given to those who should have access to the dashboard information, and technical capacity should be built up to avoid misinterpretation of the information.

Many countries had only a small team of programmers, system administrators and technical support teams who became overwhelmed during the enumeration process. This can lead to compromising on some of the quality assurance steps.