In theory, last night 10 million Australian Households were meant to log in to one site, and fill out sensitive personal details which the government would guard in perpetuity. We were threatened with 180 dollar per day fines for not filling out the form and told the site was secure and private and could not fail. The system was tested to handle a million submissions an hour which was supposedly “twice as many as needed“. But do the numbers — it was utterly predictable that five million households would try to fill out the form between 7 and 9 pm on the East Coast. By 7:30pm Australia’s first online census had collapsed, the site was closed. “The service won’t be restored tonight. ” As of lunch time the next day, it’s still down
