As mentioned over here, I’m proposing shorter text for the nine census questions. Here’s the second suggestion.
Is data in digital form?
Currently:
Can the data can be accessed from a computer or is it in the old paper form? If you can find it online, then it’s digital, even if it is just a scan of the paper the dataset is on. Note that data can be digital, but not accessible online. For example: A country budget can be stored on a private network in the government, but not on the Internet. This means that the data is digital, but not publicly accessible, (which is our next criteria, see further below). Still, if you have knowledge that the data is digital somewhere inside the government (for instance, if the government official you speak to tells you so), then you should mark this one “YES” (and add in the notes that you have the information from a phone call with a certain department or official person).
Proposed:
If you can find the data online, then it’s digital, even if it is just a scan of the paper showing the data.
Data can be digital, but not accessible online. For example: A country budget can be stored on a private network in the government, but not on the Internet. This means that the data is digital, but not publicly available. If you know that the data is digital somewhere inside the government (e.g. a government official tells you so), then you should answer “YES” to this question and add in the notes how you discovered the data is in digital form.