This Handbook offers background, specifications and practical examples for the improvement and/or establishment of civil registration, vital statistics and identity management systems. It presents model organizational and legal arrangements, as well as ideal descriptions, processes and protocols that are considered the gold standard. Although some national examples are offered, this text is not a technical report describing country practices, but a model to strive to. It aims to encourage countries to undertake long-term self-sustaining programmes of strengthening the management and interoperability of their civil registration, vital statistics and identity systems.

The Handbook provides guidance on planning, organisation and administration of a population and housing census. It also describes in details the pre-enumeration operations, the field enumeration, data processing, census products, dissemination and utilisation of census data, as well as evaluation, documentation and archiving.

The manual provides operational guidelines for the preparation and implementation of a post enumeration survey.It presents an overview of the various methods of evaluating censuses with a focus on the post enumeration survey methodology covering sample design, questionnaire design, planning and implementation of the survey, matching, field reconciliation and estimation of coverage and content errors.

The Global Civil Registration and Vital Statistics Group is a group of international and regional organizations coming together to forge stronger alliances in the area of civil registration and vital statistics (CRVS). With growing recognition of the value of CRVS to human rights, good governance, and development planning, monitoring and evaluation, there has been renewed interest in strengthening national CRVS systems. CRVS is also emerging as an essential underpinning of the 2030 development agenda. The Group aims, among others, to strengthen national CRVS and related systems through coordination and collaboration on global and regional initiatives and exchange of information.

The website presents practical information and guidelines on census methodology and on best practices to help countries plan and carry out a census, as well as an up-to-date account of national census taking activities and of provision of support to countries in the implementation of the census round.

This set of principles and recommendations provides guidance on establishing a functioning system for collecting, processing and disseminating vital statistics; improving sources of vital statistics, primarily the functioning of the civil registration system and its components; and the role of complementary sources of vital statistics, such as population censuses, household surveys and public-health records.

The main objective of the Principles and Recommendations is to provide international principles and recommendations for use by national statistical offices and census officials in countries throughout the world in planning and organizing their censuses

The Handbook provides guidance on the measurement of economic characteristics in population censuses, based on relevant experiences of countries, with a particular focus on the questions used and the requirements for processing of responses.

This Knowledge Center documents and disseminates United Nations methodological guidelines, research articles and country practices and activities in the area of civil registration and vital statistics. It aims at facilitating the international exchange and sharing of knowledge and information, as well as provision of guidance to countries, and monitoring progress made on civil registration and vital statistics.
The Knowledge Center is a searchable database that contains documents on civil registration and vital statistics guidelines, demographic methods, and development of civil registration and vital statistics in various countries.

The Census Knowledge Base is a fundamental part of the resource centre for the 2010 World Population and Housing Census Programme. It is a repository of documents relevant for the field of population and housing census taking. This includes international census methodological guidelines as well as documents on best practices in census taking.