“Logica has been a crucial element in our team. Any potential problems were uncovered and resolved at a very early stage, enabling the census to take place smoothly and securely.” Graham Emmons, Lockheed Martin UK Census programme director

About the 2011 Census
Every ten years, the Office for National Statistics (ON S) and Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NI SRA ) carry out a census of England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

The questionnaire for the 2011 Census contained questions over 32 pages, for up to six people in the household. In all, around 60 million people, their residences, employment, ethnicity, religion (voluntary) and other matters are recorded. After collation and analysis, the resulting statistics inform government policies and funding allocations for years to come.

The Challenge
The census is a mammoth exercise. To give a sense of scale, it involved sending out over 30 million forms – enough to fill 240 42-tonne lorries. There was a secure website for people filling in the form online. Around 35,000 enumerators offered assistance to help people, ensuring that the forms were returned. Scanning the handwritten forms will take about 12 months, with scanners working 24-hours-a-day. Then the data has to be analysed – a process that will take several years with the first results becoming available in mid-summer 2012. The entire exercise cost around £480 million.

But ensuring the privacy of census data throughout the process, from printing forms to data storage, is another matter. That’s where Logica came in.

Our job was to help design the security around the consortium element of the census and the companies supporting it, and to provide a very high level of assurance to ON S and NI SRA , and ultimately, the public, that every care had been taken to preserve the confidentiality of the service.

Our Answer
First, we defined what needed protection – from paper and data to business processes and physical locations – for every party in the LMUK consortium. This was undertaken in consultation with ON S, NI SRA and other Government specialists.

Then we quantified the security implications of any security event or combination of events on what was being protected, ranking them from negligible to very high.

Our team also prepared an overarching business continuity plan, which dovetailed into the vast suite of plans and procedures across the whole consortium, detailing the practical measures needed to cope with an event.

Within the consortium partner organisations, we provided support to enable them to play their part and, ultimately, we audited them against the BS25999 Business Continuity Management Standard.

Security for the census had to conform to government standards, so we designed and produced a unique security regime for our approach and recommendations, which was checked and signed off by a Government Accreditor.

As a double-lock, we also made certain that measures were in line with the international security standard ISO/IEC 27001, which provides an auditable security path and ensures continuous improvements.

A Success Story
Four high-speed scanners are now making their way through millions of forms at a secure location in Manchester, where authorised personnel will interpret any handwriting that cannot be interpreted by the electronic systems. Data has been backed up and encrypted. Paper forms, once scanned and confirmed, will be securely destroyed.