GIGO.... "Garbage in Garbage Out"

At first, when I read this letter, Why wasn't I asked ALL 51 questions?? :-( it struck me that this was a simply a case of of some incompetence. But, on reflection, I realised that the enumerators who came to 'interview' me also did not do much better, as she asked me only for our names, ages, religious affiliation, and profession. She then left hurriedly. I have since spoken with my neighbours, and it seems that only the basic 3 or 4 questions were asked.

Now, projecting this superficial work of the enumerators country wide, we can see that the effect of the results of this Census on Government strategy and planning can be disastrous! I remember in my days studying computer systems and programming, we were always told of the acronym "GIGO", and that is "Garbage in Garbage Out". I also read today the comments of the author of the book "Analytics" who said, and I quote.. ".. in cases where data is of the low quality, you have to trace it back to the source. If the person collecting the data has not paid enough attention to the quality, the company he is working for would then be unable to analyse them at all...... "

I am now wondering if the current census exercise is turning into an exercise of futility. What will these mainly incomplete and/or inaccurate data do the Government planning and analysis, (and we need to be right first time), when we have to plan for the country to move forward and to the next level of prosperity.

Sadly, it looks like another botched job for a Govt department, and I wonder how this will impact its KPIs and KRAs .

I hope to be corrected.

In computer terms, it's garbage in, garbage out