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IN THE NAME OF ALLAH
THE COMPASSIONAT AND THE MERIFUL
Introduction
The Statistical Centre of Iran as the main
producer of statistical data in the country
has been involved with the execution of a variety
of statistical projects such as Socio-Economic,
Agricultural, Cultural, Manufacturing &
Mining, Trade & Services, Construction &
Infrastructural Surveys or Censuses, ect. as
well as conduct of some projects on an adhoc
basis since its establishment. Particularly,
the Statistical Centre if Iran is also officially
responsible for implementation of the General
Census of Population and Housing in the country
decennially. The Centre has conducted the Census
in 1956, 1966, 1976, and 1986 so far.
As regards the statistical issues put forward
in the Annotated Provisional Agenda of the Eleventh
Session of the ESCAP Committee on Statistics,
the Statistical Centre of Iran (the SCI) would
like to present its activities and viewpoints,
taking into consideration the said issues.
Statistical projects of
the SCI.
1. Censuses
The SCI conducts National Censuses of Population
and Housing decennially, whereby it collects
accurate statistics and updates its statistical
frames for sample surveys implementation.
2. Samplings
The Centre conducts annually several sample
surveys whereby the required time series are
provided to be used by the planners.
3. Registers ( administrative
records)
In view of the fact that registers enjoy a
considerable accuracy and are cost effective,
the Centre preferably utilizes the existing
registers in the other organizations and gradually
makes the necessary revisions in its statistical
surveys with the development of registers.
4. National Accounts
A considerable number of the Centre's surveys
are those dealing with production of economic
indexes and national accounts, which are mostly
employed as the basis for the long-run and middle-run
development plans. The Centre is presently planning
for preparation of regional accounts.
The national accounts are produced within an
internationally agreed framework, concepts and
classifications. Indeed, implementation of national
accounts has been started seriously since the
1986 input-output table was provided. Experience
in input-output table led to the compilation
of production account breakdowns by 59 industries
of origin. In this regard some methodological
handbooks have been prepared based on the new
SNA.
In production accounts all concepts, classifications
and all of the 1993 SNA recommendations are
applied. For example, the output of insurance
companies are measured and allocated in the
procedure of the 1993 SNA recommendations. Similarly,
FISIM is measured and allocated in one of the
procedures recommended by the 1993 SNA .
In the meantime, in addition to production
accounts, GDP from the expenditure approach
and its components have been comiled and published
recently
In compilation of national accounts, in addition
to consumption and production accounts, the
Centre intends to improve the accounts in the
field of institutional sectors. The most important
topics of the Centre's programs for coming years,
based on the phase (milestones) suggested by
the intersecretarial working group on national
accounts (IWGSNA) are as follows
- Compilation of production
accounts in the framework of cross-classification
by industries and sectors for total economy,
non-financial corporations, financial corporations,
government and household;
- Compilation of supply
and use tables with more details;
- Compilation of input-output
tables for the year 2001;
- Compilation of primary
income allocation account, if feasible;
- Compilation of production
account for 28 Ostans (provinces) during the
next five years;
Publications and information
supply
5. Publications
Besides publishing the results of its statistical
projects, the Centre provides some publications
to let other statistical bodies know about the
statistical standards and definitions. The Centre
also releases five different periodicals.
6. The Centre's information
unit
Many scholars, students, and other applicants
daily refer to the information unit of the Centre.
The users could avail themselves of the Center's
computer network and if it is not responsive
to their needs, they may send the Centre their
orders for information they need. The unit provides
the demandants with necessary guidance and consultations
meeting their requirements for information items
accordingly.
7. Accessibility to the
Centre's information network:
Since 3 years ago the Centre has made its information
network accessible to people having modems with
them through telephone lines. Thousands of subscribers
are now linked to this network through long
distances.
Promotion of statistical
knowledge
8. Active participation
in compilation of the "Statistical Encyclopedia"
Through a letter of understanding on joint
investment with the "Encyclopedia Foundation"
the Centre is currently involved in compilation
of the Encyclopedia.
9. Holding scientific
Seminars
Besides holding regular monthly scientific
lectures attended by statisticians from the
other organizations as well as university professors,
the Centre usually supports the statistical
conferences and seminars financially.
10. Computer and information
supply projects
In order to do the data processing in a decentralized
manner, the Centre has attempted to develop
its provincial offices since 1993 to serve this
purpose. The concern of this project is that
each provincial office is required to process
the data collected by itself, whereas the Centre
will have a direct and regular supervision on
the performance of these provincial offices
to ensure if they have observed the standards.
11. Decentralized Information
Supply Project
Another objective of the Centre is to supply
information in a decentralized manner. So, by
using a Database Server and applying data distributed
in provinces, the Centre, while directly suppling
information to local user, will meet information
needs all over the country in a decentralized
manner. The project has undergone designing,
programming and testing stages, and will be
put into opperation after the establishment
of the WAN expanded network.
12. Mechanization of the
Administrative Affairs:
In addition to the established mechanized systems
for statistical surveys data processing, a computerized
system has been set up to process the Center's
administrative and personnel affairs such as
registeration, follow-up and filing of the letters
and documents, etc.
13. GIS Project
In order to set up the geographic information
system, the Centre is presently transforming
rural areas maps into computer programmes and
is at the same time preparing the system to
which statistics resulted from statistical projects
will be added immediately after the completion
of different layers.
14. National Statistical
Database
To provide the country's authorities and planners
with information, the Centre has set up a statistical
database which includes all indices and key
statistics rendered in various time series and
geographical levels.
15. Wide Area Network
(WAN) Project
To execute decentralized data processing and
information supply projects the Centre is required
to have a broad network not only to transfer
data more quickly, but also to supervise and
control the accuracy of the operations. The
project has undergone research stages and at
present it is in the stage of Backbone establishment.
The SCI and the affiliated units in Ostans (projects)
constitute the Nodes of this Network.
16. Present Studies
In order to accelerate the information flow
and prevent data entry errors, the Centre is
planning to carry out studies to employ Optical
Character Recognition instead of Optical Mark
Reader for the censuses and surveys in future.
17. Comprehensive Monitoring
of the Statistical Projects
In view of the fact that monitoring activities
are of prime importance to ensure the successful
implementation of the statistical projects,
the Centre has conducted a series of studies
in order to design a comprehensive scientific
monitoring project by which it can have a regular
and accurate supervision on all stages of a
statistical project from selection of the project's
subject-matter, designing, field operations,
data processing, dissemination of the results,
etc. to the end. Therefore, the Centre would
like to highlight the monitoring of a statistical
project as a universal or at least a regional
interest so that there may be avenues to exchange
ideas or experiences, if any, in this respect
among the statistical organizations for better
implementation of their statistical projects.
18. Financial crisis on
Statistical Services
Most countries are more or less suffering from
financial crisis on their socio-economic services,
the statistical ones included. The efforts should
be made to find practical procedures to overcome
such a problem. At least, the countries in the
ESCAP region can cooperate with one another
in this respect. Omission of costly statistical
projects and giving priorities to the projects
both useful for national purposes and for universal
or regional comparisons, exchange of the technical
knowledge or know-how and experiences, holding
regional training courses, as well as benefiting
from UN financial support can be alternatives
to sustain the financial constraints imposed.
Here, as mentioned before in our paper presented
to the tenth session, it should be pointed out
that the administrative records or registers,
considering the principle of cost-effectiveness,
can be seriously regarded as being the most
favourable device to replace the very costly
traditional surveys or censuses provided that
the necessary improvements can be made on the
quality of such records or registers.
19. Production of Statistics
for the Third Socio-Economic and Cultural Plan
A specialized staff has been assigned to consider
the statistical requirements for the successful
implementation of this Plan. The staff has begun
its activities to achieve the following objectives:
- General objectives:
to produce statistics for the Third Plan
- Detailed objectives:
- To take the necessary
steps to meet the Plan's statistical requirements
- To facilitate the complete
coverage of the statistical needs for
National Accounts
- To avoid parallel activites,
waste of time, and heavy costs
- To improve quality
of statistics produced, ensuring the public's
confidence in them
- The work procedure
- To recognize the statistical
needs based on statistical indexes and
items (considering geographical characteristics,
time series, ect.)
- To select ways for
satisfying the statistical items required,
giving priority to censuses or surveys
- To determine the statistical
projects required
- To establish the executive
organization of the statistical projects
Duration: second half of 1988- first half of
1989
- The executive organization:
Including a specialized staff, a reviewing
and coordinating committee, and eleven working
groups
20. International and
regional cooperations
A. Mr. Lau Kak En, Director of Statistical
Institute for Asia and Pacific (SIAP), paid
a visit to Tehran, in order to meet Iranian
authorities(in particular Statistical Centre
of Iran as the focal point) and discussed the
collaboration between the SCI and the United
Nations Statistical Institute for Asia and the
Pacific in the conduct of statistical training
courses for ECO countries and other countries
of the region in three areas of sampling, survey
methodologies and national accounts. The two
organizations have agreed on the main points
of the concurrence and after the determination
of details of the programme and contract, the
courses will be conducted in near future.
The Statistical Centre of Iran, planning to
put into practice a long-term idea for development
of different accounts, decided to avail itself
of the experience of ESCAP Statistical Division
. Accordingly, Ms Heidi Arboleda as regional
adviser on national accounts at Statistics Division,
conducted a training workshop on 1993 System
of National Accounts from 28 September to 6
October 1998, in the SCI, which was highly beneficial
to the experts of the field. We hope that the
SCI could take advantage of such advisory services
in other statistical fields.
B. Statistical data producing departments in
the Islamic Republic of Iran in general and
the Statistical Centre of Iran in particular
consider the improvement of statistical data
quality, filling in statistical gaps, and unification
of statistical information produced in all fields,
particularly in the field of demographic and
vital statistics, and, in the meantime, take
steps to publish and disseminate such data immediately
after their production.
As the most important organization responsible
for the production of demographic statistics,
the Statistical Centre of Iran has established
Iran POPIN Centre (IPC) according to the recommendations
of international organizations in order to provide
user friendly information.
Objectives of the IPC
In order to strengthen and coordinate cooperation
with POPIN centres in Asia/Pacific region, Iran
POPIN Centre (IPC) started its pilot operations
in 1996 and was formally established in 1997
as a subsidiary of ESCAP POPIN centres and started
its operations towards decentralization of statistical
activities and facilitating the production and
rapid dissemination of demographic data. IPC
objectives include:
- Unification of definitions
and concepts of demographic items in statistical
surveys across the country.
- Promotion and development
of technical information of experts on population
issues.
- Production of applied
demographic data and population information
on national level.
- Centralization of population
information in order to facilitate data accessibility
to domestic and international users.
- Exchange of information
producing experiences with other countries
of the region and the rest of the world.
- Classification of data
according to their uses.
- Unification of nationwide
demographic information and prevention of
parallel activities.
Organization of Iran POPIN
Iran POPIN consists of a central council whose
members are officials in charge of the four
working groups who perform their duties under
the SCI Deputy for Statistical Projects. The
four working groups are:
- Working group on demographic
data;
- Working group on information
supply system;
- Working group on international
affairs;
- Working group on administrative
and financial affairs.
Members of each group consist of subject-matter
senior experts specialized in each related field.
Iran POPIN system and
its accessibility
Iran population information supply system has
been designed within the format of WEB home
pages in two parts of (1) definitions and concepts,
and (2) information tables. Each part is also
separately accessible. Definitions and concepts
peculiar to each table are also observed and
accessible along with the table. The system
has been designed according to international
standards and can be developed without any change
in design. The system is user-friendly and compatible
with standard home pages existing in the Internet.
The system, applicable by all existing standard
Browsers, can be utilized by the users in order
to design statistical charts within EXCEL, WORD,
etc. environments. At present, Iran POPIN can
be viewed and downloaded from ESCAP channels
as:
- http://www.escap.org.
-
http://www.unescap.org/esid/psis/population/popin/profiles/iran/pub.htm
- http://www.unescap.org/esid/psis/population/
The 1998 Activities
and Future Programs
IPC central council, holding several working
sessions, have conducted the following activities
- To design Iran population
information supply system;
- To enter seventeen tables
on 1996 General Census of Population and Housing,
as well as the related definitions in the
Internet;
- To conduct three researches
on such fields as "Iran Population Indicators",
"The Households Having Disabled Members" and
"Statistics on Immigration in the Country";
- To publish "Population
Censuses at a Glance" in English, containing
a collection of the selected data of the country's
general Censuses;
- To have "The Selected
Tables of 1996 Census" and "Iran Population
Indicators, 1956-1996" under publication;
- To conduct a workshop
on population softwares; and
- To establish a particular
place for IPC and its especialized library
in the Statistical Centre of Iran.
In addition, IPC is going to compile and publish
population periodicals and to insert other population
data in the Internet.
The SCI joint project
with UNDP (IRA/96/001)
This project will strengthen the national information
system to supply the national economic managers
with reliable and up-to-date information for
monitoring exclusively the macroeconomic performance
of the economy.
This project will also try to extend and update
macroeconomic data, standardize methods of data
collection and analysis and enhance the capacity
of the network system of the SCI (the collection
and analysis of data as specified by the macroeconomic
managers, where the network relates to the one
under which the generated macroeconomic data
are made available to the users).
The objective of this sub-program would be
to improve and update the skills of the SCI
to serve as the centre for providing macroeconomic
information more efficiently.
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