The register census is one of the central, future-oriented projects in the field of official statistics and, in the context of register modernisation, an important driving force for a digital, de-bureaucratised administration in Germany.
First of all, a census has to provide precise population figures and demographic information such as age, sex or citizenship. Many political decisions require that solid data basis. Examples of this are the financial equalisation among the Länder and the delimitation of constituency boundaries for Bundestag elections. To enable the political and administrative communities to plan for the future, reliable census results are also required in the areas of building and housing stocks, housing circumstances, living arrangements in households and families, labour market participation and educational attainment.
The census method is being refined further. There are plans to convert the census gradually into a purely register-based procedure (register census) by 2031, which will no longer require additional surveys to be conducted. The data will then be obtained from existing administrative or statistical sources in a largely automated manner. The once-only principle is the guiding idea. People will have to transmit their data only once and will no longer be obliged to provide information themselves for reliable census results. In some cases, this requires setting up new registers after a relevant legal basis has been established. For example, a register of buildings and dwellings has to be set up as an administrative register for the data on buildings and dwellings needed in the register census. The register of buildings and dwellings thus will also provide information required by the political, administrative and scientific communities for their purposes. It will also play a major role in developing and combining real property data in the context of register modernisation.
It is especially the data users who will benefit from a register census. It will be possible to provide census results earlier, more frequently and in a more detailed regional breakdown. At the same time, the usual high data quality will be maintained. Also, official statistics will meet the future data needs of the European Commission, which could not be satisfied by the current method without considerable additional work. One of the requirements of the European Commission is that part of the census results should be available annually rather than every ten years.
Highest data protection standards, which can for instance be ensured by strict access limitations and modern encryption techniques, will be factored into the register census right from the beginning.
