Do you use census data? We'd like your feedback.

Last updated

13 Dec 2022

Administrative data

We plan to use administrative data for quality assurance of the 2022 census.

Administrative data is data held by local and national government or other public bodies. They use it to support their own day-to-day activities.

We have already used administrative data as part of the census rehearsal in 2019.

Information on the quality of the administrative datasets that we use is available in our Quality Assurance of Administrative Datasets report.

We will publish more information about how we used administrative data in the rehearsal as part of our external methodology assurance panels.

Read more about how we will use administrative data in our data impact protection assessments:

Use of Administrative Data Sources for Census 2022 Data Protection Privacy notice

This Privacy Notice explains why we will use Administrative Data for Scotland’s Census 2022.

Administrative data used during census processing quality assurance

Some administrative data will be used during census data processing, for example to Remove False Persons and Resolve Multiple Records.

Administrative data is also used as a comparator source for Statistical Quality Assurance.

Administrative data used during census estimation

Administrative data will be used in census Estimation and Adjustment. This will help us produce accurate estimates of Scotland’s population at national and local levels.

Administrative data will be used alongside to census and Census Coverage Survey (CCS) records to identify how many people and households were missed in the census.

Characteristics from administrative data will guide the imputation of missing people and households.

Find out more about how administrative data will be used in census Estimation and Adjustment:  Scotland's Census 2022: Securing high quality Census outputs and Population Estimates

Information on which administrative datasets will be used is available in this document explaining our use of administrative data for Scotland's Census 2022.

Administrative data based population and household estimates project

One goal of the census programme is to make recommendations for future censuses.

We've started a project to explore the future use of administrative data collected by public bodies and services. The purpose of project is to see how we can augment or replace data collected by the census in the future.

The project will create population and household estimates using administrative data.

We published the second report from this project on 14 December 2021:

Administrative Data Based Population Estimates, Scotland 2016 - 2018

Administrative Data Based Population Estimates, Scotland 2016

Stakeholder consultation

It's important that users tell us what they think about using administrative data in this way.

We’ve consulted stakeholders, first as part of the Beyond 2011 programme and again in 2017. We will continue to talk to our stakeholders throughout 2022.

If you would like to contribute to this project, email: [email protected]