Estonia spends much more on census than Latvia, Lithuania
08.02.2012, 13:14While Estonia spent 14.4 euros per capita to carry out its census, Latvia spent only 3.7 euros and Lithuania spent 4.4 euros, writes Äripäev.
The paper published a report showing that total census-related costs in Latvia were 7.7 million euros, while Estonia is spending 18.9 million including 10 million in wage costs of the project team and about two thousand enumerators.
Priit Potisepp, head of Statistics Estonia, told the paper that Estonian census costs were higher because of investments in technology.
The IT system for the census cost 1.3 million euros to develop and was created by Webmedia Group, one of Estonia’s leading IT developers. Webmedia’s CEO Taavi Kotka told Äripäev that never before has any country attempted to conduct an online census with such an extensive questionnaire.
„Statistics Estonia is not a student, but a pioneer. It’s been only a week and we are having enquiries from abroad about our experience,” he said.
The second major cost item was the acquisition of a total of 2,332 laptop computers that cost 1,26 million euros. The computers were supplied by Elion.
Potisepp says that such a cost comparison is difficult. „We don’t know what are the exact costs and spending periods. In Estonia, we are talking about the budgeted cost and not the actual cost,” he adds.