October 1, 2021 will go down as the day when one very important milestone was reached by the National Statistics Office (NSO). For the first time, the office started collecting census data online. The Census of Population and Housing 2021 is the 18th in a line of national censuses conducted since 1842. The census is a nationwide project held every 10 years and involves enumerating all residents and dwellings in Malta. Participation in the census is obligatory by law. The census is governed by national and EU law – the Census Act of 1948 and the EU Census Framework Regulation (EC) No. 763/2008 of the European Parliament and of the Council on Population and Housing Censuses, and its implementing regulations, respectively. The latter ensures the production of harmonised statistics from this project, which is comparable across the EU. Another significant development introduced in this year’s census is spatial geocoding. This involves the recording of the coordinates of each dwelling and eventually studying census results based on a one-km2 grid. This will allow a geospatial element at the analysis stage, resulting in the compilation and publication of first-ever geospatial census...