The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) is urging Australians who have not completed their Census forms, to do so before the end of this week.

Duncan Young, head of ABS, says about 95 per cent of households had completed the census despite an embarrassing website outage on census night.

He told the ABC that although Friday is the official deadline the national survey closes,  the website would not be shut down until midnight on Sunday.

“We’ve made the decision to keep the online system open until Sunday night because we can, and it just gives people another couple of days to finish off their forms,” he said.

In 2011, the census completion rate was 96 per cent.

Under the Census and Statistics Act, an individual can be fined up to $180 a day for each day they fail to complete and return the form.

– TiVi Tuan-san