ABS boss: We made "poor judgements"

The head of the Australian Bureau of Statistics, David Kalisch, appeared at a Senate estimates hearing today, where he thanked the public for its "forbearance and diligence" in completing the census and apologised for the IT shambles on census night.

"The ABS tested the patience and commitment of many households, especially through the difficulties accessing the call centre and the unavailability of the census online form for nearly two days," he said, reading from a statement.

"We made a difficult decision to take the system offline on August 9 to ensure the security of census data, but we should not have got to that point and the system should have been robust to denial-of-service events.

"The ABS made a number of poor judgments in our preparation for the 2016 census that led to the poor service experienced by many households. I apologise to the community on behalf of the ABS and I repeat that apology sincerely again today."

Image courtesy ABS