The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has announced today that Jil Matheson, the National Statistician, has recommended a predominantly online census in 2021 supplemented by the further use of administrative and survey data. A similar announcement has been made by National Records of Scotland, with regard to the 2021 census in Scotland.

This announcement comes after a lengthy consultation process, which looked at the future of census-taking in the UK. In their consultation, ONS considered two options:

1. a decennial census similar to the current approach, but largely conducted online
2. replacement with data captured from administrative sources, accompanied with a rolling annual sample survey.

(more…)

The final 3 VML terminals were installed today and will be ready for use as soon as their connectivity has been verified. Makes 10 in all!

The Microdata Analysis and User Support (MAUS) team at ONS have confirmed that VML access has now been restored. Hurrah! However, some work may unfortunately have been lost; this is from the text of a MAUS email sent to VML users today:

Following the recent hardware incident in the VML which has led to a temporary interruption in the service, I am pleased to say that the fault has been rectified. However, in order to repair the system it was necessary to effect a full restore of all data files from the backup that was created overnight on the 11th of July. This means that any work that was carried out after this date has, regrettably, been lost and cannot be recovered. If this affects you, please accept our sincere apologies for the rework that you will have to do in order to recover what has been lost.

Access should be as normal from Monday, but please do check with MAUS or CeLSIUS staff if you are travelling to use the VML…