Census Scan

Your Australian Census letter holds the two things you need to log in: a 16-digit Census number and a 9-character temporary password. Census Scan reads them with your camera and opens the official Census website — census.abs.gov.au, run by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) — with both fields typed in for you. Check the numbers, press Next on the page, and get on with your Census. WHY WE MADE THIS Could the Census have been an easier process? We think so. Logging in means reading 25 random letters and digits off a printed page and typing them without a slip. The letter prints them in spaced groups — which helps you read them, but plants a doubt: do you type the spaces or not? The temporary password mixes lowercase letters and digits that are easy to confuse — is that a lowercase L or a one? An O or a zero? Not everyone finds 25 characters of that easy to read, let alone enter correctly on a phone keyboard. A QR code on the letter would have solved it — everyone knows QR codes. There isn't one. So we built the missing piece: an app that does the reading and the entering for you. HOW IT WORKS 1. Point your camera at Step 2 of your Census letter. 2. Check the two values it read. Tap to correct anything. 3. The official website opens with your details filled in. Press its Next button and complete your Census there, exactly as normal. That is the whole app. Once the website is open, Census Scan's job is done. PRIVATE BY DESIGN • Nothing is recorded. The camera feed is read on your phone by Apple's built-in text recognition. No photo or video is saved. • Nothing is stored. Your details are held in memory just long enough to fill in the login page, then vanish. No accounts, no analytics, no tracking, no third-party code. • Nothing is sent anywhere except the official ABS website — the same page your letter tells you to visit. • Open source. The complete source code is public, so anyone can verify every one of these claims: github.com/agenta-consulting/census-scan Census Scan is a free community tool made by Agenta. It is not affiliated with, or endorsed by, the Australian Bureau of Statistics.