The publication is intended to serve as a reference document on management aspects of conducting a population and housing census. The handbook provides guidelines, mainly, for population and housing censuses based on traditional field enumeration. The objectives of the publication, in particular, are to provide guidance to countries on how to: (i) develop a structure able to effectively manage the census planning and operational processes; (ii) plan all the processes that need to be considered in establishing a census; and (iii) design control and monitoring processes. The publication is also useful to those who need to plan surveys given the detailed description of the overall process of collecting, processing, and disseminating the data. The structure of the handbook reflects as closely as possible the census cycle. The initial chapters discuss management aspects concerning the planning and preparatory stages, followed by discussions on the operational stages, i.e.: pre-enumeration activities, field operations, processing, dissemination of census results, evaluation and finally documentation and archiving.