POPULATION AND HOUSING CENSUSES IN SLOVAKIA ON THE WEBSITE

1. POPULATION AND HOUSING CENSUSES IN SLOVAKIA ON THE WEBSITE Miroslav Hudec Pavol Büchler INFOSTAT – Bratislava MSIS Geneva 8.-10.5.2007

2. Introduction • Brief history of censuses • Censuses in Slovakia • About censuses on the website • Censuses from years 1980 to 2001 • Censuses from years 1921 to 1970 • Conclusions and future improvements

3. Brief history of censuses Population censuses belong to the oldest statistical actions in the human history. The effort to find the number of inhabitants of an area is as old as all advanced civilisations are. The first ancient censuses were realised mainly for the military and tax purposes. In Middle Age and in first centuries of modern times certain registration actions were performed in Europe. More or less regular censuses involving the whole population were realised in Europe only from the half of 18th century. Items like, biological, social and economic characteristics were gradually added to surveys.

4. Censuses in Slovakia In the area of Slovakia, then a part of Hungaria, is as the beginning of organised statistical surveys considered the year 1715. In this year was realised the registration of population aimed to family heads of groups whose were the subject to taxation. The first census including all inhabitants was realised in Slovakia in years 1778 – 1785. The monitored items included name, age, marital status, class rank, employment of registered persons and data concerning the population migration. In 1847 was in Hungaria established the Statistical Office with an routine service and from this year censuses were performed in ca 10 year periods. From 1869 were censuses realised according to the principles defined by international statistical congresses. As early as 1890 the data were processed also by Hollerith punch card machines.

5. Censuses on the website • The aim of this project was to enhance the knowledge of domestic and foreign general audience and professionals about modern population and housing censuses realised in the area of Slovakia.The project team were analyzed censuses from years 1921 to 2001. The solution offers: • detailed results and other related basic information (legislation, historical • context, questionnaires, processing technologies, maps...) • unified accessibility and comprehensibility by presenting data and other • relevant documents in one place and in the unified form, • comparison selected indicators in their historical context (the website contains • time series, some of which start in 1848), • open scalable solution allowing trouble-free expansion in the future.

6. Censuses from years 1980 to 2001 The data from these censuses, which were already in the census time computer processed, were available in digital form as Oracle databases. The data from 1980 and 1991 years were originally stored as text files and converted to Oracle within the frame of another project in year 2004. However, the data from these censuses were in different formats and stored in separate databases. As the first step in the project realisation the creation of the three - dimensional data structure (time, territory and indicator), the conversion to the unified data format and the storage of data into this database was realised. This solution allows the simple retrieval of stored data and their use in the presentation form. Metadata for search and navigation are interconnected with descriptive metadata to allow easy navigation across territorial unit structure and table templates.

7. Censuses from years 1980 to 2001

8. Censuses from years 1921 to 1970 The data sources from these censuses were available in paper form only. From the 1970 census, which was the first census where data were computer processed, electronic text files exist, but they are incomplete, so the project team had to work with paper data sources. Selected tables from paper documents found in archives, were converted into electronic form and finally transformed into HTML format. Unlike the tables of results from the years 1981 – 2001, which are created from database records and table templates according to the user's request dynamically, the tables of results from the 1921 - 1970 censuses are static HTML files.

9. Censuses from years 1921 to 1970

10. Conclusions and future improvements The website is realised as a compact entity; almost all web pages (except some thematic maps) are presented in one window. The authors paid maximal attention to the user friendliness of the system, so that the navigation accross the web pages would be comprehensible and efficient from the user’s point of view. The application was prepared with the perspective of its future enhancement by results of the next census planned for the year 2011.

11. Conclusions and future improvements • Future improvements: • to enlarge the amount of presented data to the municipality level(1980-2001), • to expand the amount of time series, • to convert data from older censuses into similar form as the last censuses • and present them in dynamic way, • to add a search engine working across the website, • to enhance the English version of presentation as some information is • available only in Slovak language, • to cooperate with statisticians and historians to present data from • censuses older than 1921 census. • The address of the Website is http://sodb.infostat.sk/sodb/index.htm

12. Thank you for your attention