The Head of Rosstat Mr. Pavel Malkov visited the Shuya Plant “Aquarius” in Ivanovo region. The company will produce tablet PCs for Rosstat. Gadgets will be used during Russian population census. Mr. Malkov examined the work of production lines and software quality, talked to factory employees and journalists.
A full launch of production will take place on June 30. At that time the Moscow "Byterg" enterprise will also start to produce the tablets. In total, it is planned to release 360 thousand devices. After the census, some of the tablets will remain in Rosstat for regular surveys. The rest will be handed over for use in social projects.
According to the Head of Rosstat, the first batch of devices will be sent to the regions in three to four months’ time. They are to be applied for filling out electronic census forms in hard-to-reach areas. “This will be an endurance test at places, where there is no opportunity to quickly charge the device, and where the gadgets will have to resist the cold,” said Mr. Malkov.
Tablet computers weigh less than 700 grams, which will significantly facilitate the work of enumerators. Before, they had to carry heavy briefcases with paper census forms. “We received a product balanced in terms of its characteristics, capable of accomplishing assigned task and providing enumerators with comfortable working conditions,” noted the Head of Rosstat.
The tablets use the “Aurora” operating system. This is a convenient and reliable product in the market. It fully meets the needs of Rosstat for the future census.
In addition to the Russian operating system, tablets are equipped with domestic software. When developing software, the key condition was data security. “How to protect the software and hardware complex from unauthorized access, to make it impossible to download or get any other access to the data, collected by enumerators. Developers specifically focused on this task,” said Mr. Malkov.
Application of digital solutions will take census to a new level. As a result, the state will receive extremely relevant information that can be used for further strategic decisions. It is important to emphasize that the census is an absolutely impersonal product.
The population census will be held in April 2021, but in hard-to-reach places it will begin in October of this year. The government has already signed a relevant decree. “For us, this delay is not just an opportunity to take care of people’s health: both of our enumerates and all residents of the country,” said the Head of Rosstat, – "We see this as an opportunity to better prepare for the use of modern online technologies. They are going to become a hallmark of the first digital census.”
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