---
title: "Text-Messaging Plays Big Role in Indonesian Census"
description: "Indonesia, the world’s fourth-largest country, is taking a census this year, as it does each decade. Conducted in May, it relied heavily on text-messaging to convey data from enumerators in the field to their supervisors at central headquarters. According to a report on the Population Reference Bureau website, these day-by-day reports helped census officials monitor […]"
date: "2010-08-03"
authors:
  - name: "D’Vera Cohn"
    job_title: "Former Senior Writer/Editor"
    link: "https://www.pewresearch.org/staff/dvera-cohn/"
url: "https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2010/08/03/text-messaging-plays-big-role-in-indonesian-census/"
---

# Text-Messaging Plays Big Role in Indonesian Census

Indonesia, the world's fourth-largest country, is taking a census this year, as it does each decade. Conducted in May, it [relied heavily on text-messaging ](http://www.prb.org/Publications/Articles/2010/indonesiacensus.aspx)to convey data from enumerators in the field to their supervisors at central headquarters. According to a report on the Population Reference Bureau website, these day-by-day reports helped census officials monitor how well the count was going.

Also on the PRB website is a link to a video interview with the report's author, Terence H. Hull, a consultant to the Indonesian census who is professor of demography in the Australian Demographic and Social Research Institute. Because of improvements in Indonesia's census-taking this year, he forecasts that[ more than 240 million people will be counted, higher than the official prediction of 235 million.](http://www.prb.org/Multimedia/Video/2010/indonesiacensus.aspx)