Another edition of the “Knowing UE-RS” event has held in the auditorium of the State Unit of Rio Grande do Sul on September 17. Luís Eduardo Azevedo Puchalski, operational coordinator of the 2020 Census, talked about this operation, which will be carried out by the IBGE next year. The population Census is extremely important for Brazil, as it is a reliable base for precisely counting the population. In addition, it is the only source of reference to understand the life conditions of the population in every Brazilian municipality and its internal territorial divisions.

Puchalski presented all the steps previously done, like the data collection test through the Internet in May 2018, the first pilot test (PP1) in August last year and the second pilot test (PP2) in the state, carried out between February and June 2019. He also unveiled the work plan of the Dress Rehearsal, emphasizing the participation of Rio Grande do Sul, which will take place in quilombola areas in the municipalities of Porto Alegre and Restinga Seca.

                                                                            Luís Eduardo Puchalski, operational coordinator of the 2020 Census, talks with servants about the operation next year

The themes included in the questionnaires that will be applied in the Dress Rehearsal were also a highlight in the presentation. They will be of two types: the Basic one, comprising 26 questions, and the Sample one, with 76 questions. Analyzing the challenging scenario due to the increasing difficulty to access households - which was evidenced during the second pilot test carried out in Porto Alegre -, the operational coordinator of the Census in RS highlighted the work that has been developed to take information about the Census to administrators, doormen and surveillance teams of residential condos. “In the extension of the PP2, carried out between May and June 2019, 25% of the interviews were only possible after at least 6 visits to the households,” highlighted Puchalski. The access to households located in residential condos is more and more difficult due to the feeling of insecurity. To reduce this problem, a series of meetings with unions and associations of administrators and private security companies, condo administrations and surveillance companies has been carried out by the operational coordination since June 2019, in order to establish partnerships that will allow to deliver key information on the 2020 Census, especially in terms of visual identification and id check of future enumerators through the appropriate channels (phone 0800 721 8181 and website www.respondendo.ibge.gov.br).

                                                                            During the presentation, slides and videos were shown highlighting the major aspects of the census operation

The coordinator also highlighted the importance of the Coordination and Supervisory teams and their role to daily control the pace of the data collection in order to count with productive enumerators. It will be key to the operation, given that the population and the number of occupied households should have increased compared with the 2010 Census and the number of seats for enumerators decreased. Therefore, an increase is expected in the data collection through the Internet, which will be key to fulfill the deadline of three months. In 2010, only 0.06% of the questionnaires were answered through the Internet.

During the event, José Renato Braga de Almeida, head of the State Unit of RS, presented some big numbers of the operation, highlighting that nearly 13 thousand people will be hired among census analysts, census sub-area coordinators, operational census agents, municipal census agents, supervisor census agents and enumerators. Almeida also talked about the importance to involve the entire team of servants in the census operation, which will be key to coordinate the team of temporary professionals that will be hired.

The presentation was live broadcast to all the 38 IBGE agencies in Rio Grande do Sul.

                                                                           José Renato Braga de Almeida, head of UE-RS, and Luís Eduardo Puchalski, operational coordinator of the 2020 Census