This paper explores the use of the Internet as a channel with a lot of possibilities (and an enormous potential of growth) for the next Census round of 2011.

Spain was one of the first countries in the world that made it possible for people to answer to 2001 Census questions via the Internet. However while less than 1 per cent of Spanish dwellings (13,768 of the 14,187,169 dwellings) answered the 2001 Census by Internet the experience is useful in planning the 2011 Census.

Several reasons make the situation for the 2011 Census much more promising than 2001. The numbers of people using the Internet everyday has increased significantly, bandwidth offered by IT companies is much higher than in 2001, Web applications are much more frequent and their possibilities are not so restrictive (for example, Internet security protocols have been significantly enhanced) and device storage size has grown exponentially in the last few years. Because of these reasons the scenario in the 2011 Census, where the Internet will play an important role, will be very different from that at the time of the 2001 Census, where the existence of the Internet was essentially symbolic.

Paper presented at the joint UNECE/Eurostat meeting on Population and Housing Censuses, Geneva, 28-30 October 2009.