It’s almost the year 2020, which means the federal government’s constitutionally mandated decennial census is just around the corner.

To date, there have been 22 censuses since the first one in 1790. But there’s going to be something different about next year’s: For the first time, the census will largely be conducted online.

It’s a logical next step for the 21st-century census, which will now only require 50,000 fieldworkers instead of 150,000. However, allowing the opportunity for U.S. citizens to respond to census questions online presents various obstacles that’ll need to be addressed, such as the possibility hacking; Australia learned this the hard way when its inaugural online census was hacked in 2016, causing a $21 million setback.

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