“We looked at a lot of solutions, but Mobile Mentor and MobileIron gave the lowest risk and best value for our money. We would be happy to work with them on our future mobility initiatives.”
– VED GUPTA: ASSISTANT DIRECTOR FOR THE CENSUS 2016, TECHNOLOGY SERVICES DIVISION
Increased staff efficiency, improved management information and greatly reduced paper waste
Mobile Mentor helped the Australian Bureau of Statistics set a new benchmark for data collection, with a completion rate of more than 96 percent for the 2016 Australian Census.
A key part of the completion rate success was the use of a new app that allowed Census 2016 Field Officers to leverage the power of their mobile devices. The Mobile Collect App, developed by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, was securely delivered to 33,000 field officers by Mobile Mentor using device management software from MobileIron. It was one of the largest bring-your-own-device (BYOD) deployments in Australian history.
The app assisted census field officers to deliver census materials and to later follow-up those that had not completed the census. The app included mapping functionality and also helped field officers plan and manage their workload.
Randall Cameron, Managing Director of Mobile Mentor Australia, said the company was pleased with the outcome of the ABS Census 2016 data collection project.
“We were delighted when we were selected by the ABS as its partner in mobilising its 33,000 field officers for census data collection. We’d like to think that our independence from any one Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) vendor, combined with our agnostic approach to devices, meant we were able to offer the ABS what we felt was the lowest risk option. We selected MobileIron as the best technology fit due to architectural simplicity and proven scalability.”
“It’s great to see the government innovating with mobility solutions to meet this massive data collection project and we are very proud to have been a part of this project,”
– RANDALL CAMERON: MANAGING DIRECTOR, MOBILE MENTOR
ABS Census 2016
OUTCOMES FROM THE 2016 CENSUS
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Produced approximately 327 tonnes of less paper material than in the 2011 Census – equivalent to approximately 231 family sedans
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Travelled 230,000 less kilometres to deliver household materials than in 2011 Census – equivalent to more than five trips around the circumference of the Earth (or 58 return trips between Sydney and Perth)
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Used 3,800 kilograms of ink and 16,000 litres of glue to produce household letters, envelopes and forms
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Mailed 13.5 million letters to households and establishments across Australia
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Counted all of Australia’s 10 million dwellings and 24 million people
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Employed around 39,000 temporary staff across a variety of roles, including approximately 500 people to process the data
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Scanned paper forms as they arrived using industrial scanners operating 12 hours per day, five days per week, over 10 weeks, scanning close to 88 million pages
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Produced and publish over three trillion cells of data as a result of the information collected in the Census.
“Thanks to Mobile Mentor and the MobileIron managemeent software, the ABS’ new mobile application dramtically improved our access to management information on the collection activity and worker efficieny.
We needed a secure, simple, scalable way to deploy our app to a broad range of Android and iOS devices. Most of the devices were owned by field officers, so we needed to be transparent about the information we would be using, so that they would feel comfortable enrolling the app on their personal devices.”
– VED GUPTA: ASSISTANT DIRECTOR FOR THE CENSUS 2016, TECHNOLOGY SERVICES DIVISION
About The Australian Bureau of Statistics
The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) is the independent statistical agency of the Government of Australia. The ABS provides key statistics on a wide range of economic, population, environmental and social issues, to assist and encourage informed decision making, research and discussion within governments and the community.
