Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) has trained about 880 people to deal with a new methodology to capture the data from the Census 2011 questionnaires, with processing set to start in January, project director Calvin Molongoana said on Monday.

Minister in the Presidency responsible for National Planning Trevor Manuel inspected the progress being made at the Stats SA Data Processing Centre in Roseville, Pretoria, saying he was satisfied with the rigorous training being carried out, owing to Census 2011 involving sophisticated computerised data-capturing systems.

“A lot of training has gone into this programme, with quality oversight being a critical priority to ensure that we deliver accurate information when we compile our final report.

“The process has become information technology- and labour-intensive, all in the aim of improving the credibility of the information,” he told a media briefing.

He added that the R3.2-billion project is a critical tool to enable government to undertake adequate planning on every strategic level of South Africa’s governance. The results are expected on November 12, 2012.

Currently, the centre is accepting truckloads of questionnaires from across the country, where the boxes are entered into the electronic cataloguing system and stored in a warehouse. Molongoana said about 135 000 boxes of questionnaires were expected, each containing 2 500 double-sided pages.

The boxes are systematically labelled and the bar-coded identification labels are scanned as the boxes move through the centre’s preparation areas, preparing the questionnaires for the final scanning to take place. An important step in the process is the cutting of the bundles of questionnaires’ backs with state-of-the-art guillotines, the result being 225-million loose pages that need to be managed and scanned.

The electronic scanners are able to handle up to 2 500 double-sided colour pages a minute, after which sophisticated writing recognition software will be used to analyse the 64-billion fields to verify that all the data was captured.

About 10%, or 6.4-billion fields would need human intervention for verification.

The centre has a strict security regime in place to ensure the security and integrity of the information throughout the capturing and analysis process. However, Manuel conceded that there are currently increased security risks associated with the containers full of questionnaires in transit to the centre.

Census 2011 employed 135 380 fieldworkers during the enumeration phase of the census, visiting about 14.6-million dwellings.

Data capturing would take place in 24-hour shifts over the next six months, employing about 220 people per shift.