This chapter concludes with some recommendations that would apply equally if the IES were to remain substantially the same as it is now, or, alternatively, if it were to be overhauled radically in the manner we recommend (see Chapter 9).

The way in which information about local conditions is preserved from census to census, and the availability of such information to those who most need it (the CFOs), could be vastly improved. One tool in the future armoury will be the DICD, but it will be useful only if it is updated constantly. This task should be decentralised to augmented Indigenous Liaison Units within the ABS regional offices in all States and Territories where the IES is implemented.

The detailed reports of the CFOs and CMU staff from the 2001 census should not only be analysed centrally in Canberra; they should be available, perhaps in edited form with commentary, to the CMU staff and CFOs employed for the subsequent census. Given that each region—or even community—has its own characteristics, substantive information about logistical problems and solutions, about the mobility patterns of regional populations and about cultural factors specific to particular regions would be of particular value. Such information would give the CFOs a ‘feel’ for the size of the task and for the local conditions they might encounter. This kind of information cannot be imparted formally and in abstract in the very compressed training time that is available.

The sheer number of different kinds of information that the CFOs have to master needs to be taken into account more fully in the training methods employed. It would be useful—and less daunting for the participants (CFOs and CMU staff)—to break the training up into more manageable chunks, allowing the CFOs the opportunity to focus on just one topic at a time. This would allow them to absorb the relevant written materials more effectively beforehand, and have that information reinforced during training. It would also give more scope for acting out scenarios, rather than just having the information delivered in lecture format. Such scenario-building, as well as giving people practical experience, is likely to throw up omissions or lack of clarity in the written materials. These can then be addressed before people go out into the field, lessening the likelihood of ad hoc and possibly inconsistent solutions being implemented on the run out in the field.

In the training that was delivered to the CFOs in 2006, there was a great deal of emphasis—necessarily so—on procedural matters and on the ‘head count’ aspect of the census. For the latter, however, there was an inadequate anticipation of the scale and complexity of the PTA problem and of the difficulties likely to be caused by the time-extended and rolling nature of the count (see following chapters). Documentation of the PTA phenomena encountered and how they were dealt with in 2006 should be analysed carefully at central and State/Territory levels, so that future training on this question can be better informed.

Matters of content and definition received relatively little emphasis in training. In particular, the IHF—the collection instrument—is itself a complex document that needs careful and detailed explication. It must be remembered that census questions are framed in terms of categories devised by the ABS, which in turn reflect the planning and policy concerns of the nation-state and its agencies. These concerns and categories are not necessarily transparent to the CFOs, let alone to the CCs, CIs and individual respondents.^[4] In order for the CFOs to train the CCs and CIs in an informed manner, it is necessary for them to understand the content and structure of the questions, and the nature of the information they are intended to elicit. In the future, if the CC role is augmented in the manner in which we have suggested in the concluding chapter, it will be possible also to train the CCs to this level of understanding.