1970 HUNGARIAN CENSUS OF POPULATION Information on the data collection and processing (1977)

I. THE COMPREHENSIVE REWIEV OF THE DATA COLLECTION AND PROCESSING - 8. The electronic data processing of the census of 1970

a/ In the preparatory and organizational activity - taking the favourable opportunities secured by the computer into consideration - both in the survey and the coding, only elementary information had to be dealt with. The working out of more complex codes was performed by the computer, as well as the mutual completion of the data referring to the persons, households, families, flats, buildings, and the coding of the data concerning households, families and buildings was similarly performed by computers. b/ In the planning and execution of the processing and communication programme, since the full-scale automatization was aimed at both in the correction of the errors and the tabulation. c/ In the organization of the publishing and the typographic preparation, since - by means of computers and electric type-writers - mirror-plates directly able to be photographed could be produced and handed over to the printing office. The advantages of the modern technology manifest themselves in the qualitative and quantitative and improving of the work, and result, in spite of the extension of the programme, in increasing savings too. On account of the compilation of the data concerning the families, households and buildings performed on electronic computers, the coding, punching, controlling and checking of more than 3, 5 millions of family- and household data as well as more than 2 millions of buildings items could be spared up. The savings, according to the experiences obtained in 1960, amounted, in the case of the family- and households data to 500 thousands, with the data referring to the buildings to 120 thousands of working hours. Had this task been performed by manual techniques, it would have required a 150 per cent increase of the census staff. As opposed to this, the compilation of the family- and households data required but 1-1, 2 thousands of computer hours, those concerning the buildings 200 hours or so. There is no objective measure available for estimating of the qualitative differences; it should be mentioned, however, that by the use of the new techniques, the conformity of the data worked out may be regarded as a natural state of affairs, while in the case of the manual coding, the success can by no means be ensured in the practice. The mechanical coding of the complex criteria of several items as well as the harmonizing of the several items connected with each other (for instance, codes of parents and children) have been left out of the comparison, since no sound basis of the comparison was available. The automatic correction of errors resulted in the saving of working hours, similarly to that mentioned above, as far as the order of magnitude is concerned. Prior to that, only the controlling of the data has been performed in mechanical way (nevertheless, the comparison of the time inputs would be meaningless, considering the differences existing between the electro-mechanical and the electronic machines), while the correction activity was performed by a team consisting of 100 persons on the average; it lasted two years approximately. Using manual techniques, the punching, repeated checking, control etc. of the corrected items might also be necessary, and that would have required more time and a greater amount of labour input again. The final organization, the drawing up of its programme as well as the test run required scarcely more than a year: 14 months. 8-10 members of the census staff and 4 persons employed with the Directorate of Computer Technics were responsible for the execution of the programme during this time. The programmes ensured the control and the correction of 100 thousands of items within 10-15 hours. 84