27 January 2021

Data from the Census are essential for the development of our country. They will help create a valuable source of information about how we live, about our worries, and what we would need help with. They are vital for the public administration and local authorities, entrepreneurs, universities, research workplaces, and also for individuals. They are for free and available to everybody.

By filling in a census form (questionnaire) each of us will contribute to quality and reliability of resulting data. Based on data from the Census, public finance and public services are decided about. The 2021 Census will provide truly unique mutually interconnected data about how Czech households look, what their structure is, what the educational attainment of their individual members is, whether they are economically active, i.e. whether they are employed or retired or whether they are still students.

The Census will also provide data about commuting to work and schools and about the way of housing. Moreover, data will be available by usual place of residence, i.e. municipality, in which people really live. It means that, for example, it will be possible to provide health care according to the precise number of people who live on the given territory and not according to the place of their permanent residence, which is often only of administrative importance. “Data from the Census are truly unique also because they depict the state of society as at a certain date, in this case as at the relevant time of the Census, which is the midnight from 26 to 27 March, when the 2021 Census starts. Their value, among other things, stems from the fact that they are available down to the level of municipalities and their parts. Therefore, it is the most comprehensive and most detailed data source for the last ten years,” Marek Rojíček, President of the Czech Statistical Office, says.

For example, the integrated rescue system certainly cannot do without information from the nationwide census. In some places, firefighters have an application available at their operation centres that helps them prepare fire responses using data from the Census. After entering an address they obtain basic information about how many people live in a burning house, what age group they belong to, what the material of the loadbearing wall of the building is, how many floors it has, or what it is heated by. Therefore, firefighters know in advance what to expect during the fire reponse and what obstacles they may face when fighting the fire. 

All those who provide for transport, i.e. transportation services are impatiently awaiting data from the Census. That is because it is necessary for them to know from where and to where people go to work and to schools, what means of transport they use and how frequently. It decides about, for example, about adding bus and train connections in a particular region. The value of the Census lies also in the fact that it is stable as for its contents. It is because it brings the same basic data every ten years. It is important for a comparison of how we used to live and how we live now. The 2021 Census starts on 27 March and it will finish on 11 May. Due to the epidemic situation, it is being prepared primarily as an online Census.  

Contact:
Jolana Voldánová
2021 Census spokeswoman
Mobile phone number: +420 704 659 357
e-mail: jolana.voldanova@scitani.cz