| The Second Meeting of the
Working Party on the Application of New Technology
to Population Data |
| Singapore, 1-3 April 1998
|
| |
STAT/WPA(2)/5(Philippines)
1 April 1998
ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL COMMISSION FOR ASIA AND THE
PACIFIC
Working Party on the Application of New Technology
to Population Data
Second Meeting
1-3 April 1998
Singapore |
| Internet Applications in
Population Data Collection and Dissemination: Experiences
at the National Statistics Office (Philippines)*
|
| By Tomas P. Africa**
|
| Contents |
| |
*
Paper presented at the Second Meeting of the Working
Party on Application of New Technology to Population
Data in Singapore on April 1-3, 1998.
**
Administrator of the National Statistics Office
(Philippines).
|
| BACKGROUND |
| In 1993, the National Statistics
Office (NSO) launched a Public-Use-File from the
1990 Philippine Census of Population and Housing.
The Office also opened for public access an on-line
data service called the NSO-EBBS (short for NSO-Electronic
Bulletin Board System). Both the PUF and the NSO-EBBS
were follow-on dissemination approaches after successfully
undertaking the 1990 census processing in a purely
microcomputer-based and decentralized environment. |
| The NSO was introduced to Internet
technology in 1994, just a year after the start
of regular operation of the NSO-EBBS. Through a
single dial-up account provided by the Department
of Science and Technology, the NSO was able to try
available Internet services. Two years later in
1996, the agency subscribed to four dial-up accounts
from a local Internet Service Provider (ISP). |
| Realizing the amazing growth of
the Internet and its potential in the dissemination
of NSO products, the Office finally decided to set
up its own Internet server in early 1997. The laying
of the NSO Internet infrastructure was completed
in July 1997. E-mail accounts were then created
for the central office staff. It was during the
NSO anniversary in August 1997 when the NSO website
was formally launched. |
| Internet access of NSO field offices
also started in 1997. As of this writing, 13 out
of the 15 regional offices have subscriptions to
ISPs in their localities. Another 18 provincial
or district offices (out of 80) also maintain subscriptions
to local service providers. At the central office,
about 60 stations connected to the local area network
have Internet access while 10 stations located in
two other buildings are remotely hooked up via dial-up
modems. The central office link to the global Internet
is provided by a 64-Kbps leased line. |
|
| PRESENT
INTERNET APPLICATIONS |
| The growing popularity of the
Internet made the NSO seriously consider the technology
for dissemination. However, nearly a year after
it has established its Internet infrastructure,
the NSO has yet to implement new applications --
besides those of the electronic mail and dissemination
of statistics -- that will take advantage of this
medium. |
| Internal
and External E-mails |
| With the setting up of an Internet
server within the premises of the NSO central office,
the Office has been able to freely define and distribute
e-mail addresses to its employees. Today, all managers
and several middle level supervisors at the central
office have their own individual e-mail addresses.
Generic addresses were also distributed for use
of support personnel of several divisions. Access
to the e-mail has improved communication between
and among NSO personnel. Coordination work have
become much easier with this facility around. E-mails
have become the mode for distributing notices of
meetings, following-up on work assignments and exchanging
messages. |
| The e-mail facility also has afforded
NSO personnel a more convenient way of communicating
with those from other agencies both in the country
and abroad. Since the e-mail addresses were made
publicly available, external customers of NSO who
had access to the Internet also turned to this medium
whenever they had to follow-up on data requests
or make inquiries about the availability of specific
data. |
| Through the use of automated mailing
lists, the e-mail facility has become a medium for
distributing news and other broadcasting developments
to users. For example, there is a mailing list that
is used to distribute new e-mail addresses to users
and another one, for announcing the regular NSO
press releases posted at the NSO website. |
| Dissemination
(external and internal) |
| Even before it set-up its own
Internet server, the Office already had its sights
trained towards the Internet, the World Wide Web
in particular, for the dissemination of the statistical
data that it generates. For one, this medium has
a global reach. Anything made available in the web
can be accessed by anybody from anywhere so long
as he has an access to the Internet. The NSO-EBBS
started NSO's incursion into the field of electronic
dissemination. However, high toll charges sometimes
prevented callers outside the Metro Manila area
from trying to access the NSO-EBBS. Another reason
for the web's attractiveness is that with all the
web development tools available, one can create
a page which has graphical and textual elements
together with just relatively little effort. |
| After three quarters of operation,
the NSO website (http://www.census.gov.ph)
now has these major offerings: |
| |
The main statistical
base of the NSO web site. Includes ASCII
tables and image map links |
| |
A compilation
of the statistical press releases - text
and table -of the NSO |
| |
The on-line
version of the NSO's monthly two-page summary
of the most current figures for various
data series |
- Technical Notes
on Surveys and Censuses
|
Notes on the
sampling design, sample selection, and weighing
procedures used in a census or survey. Includes
definition of terms. |
- FAQ on Civil Registration
|
Frequently
asked questions relating to Civil Registration
and their answers |
| |
Available
NSO publications with brief description
of the volumes and information on the latest
releases |
|
| We are still in the process of
really beefing up the statistical information under
the sectoral statistics section. And although not
yet not accessible, a publicly accessible ftp site
is being prepared. |
| To date, the NSO website averages
more than 430 document requests per day. |
| Visitors to our site may always
look forward to the immediate availability of our
statistical press releases at the NSO website. Our
statistical press releases include, among others,
the monthly releases of the CPI, foreign trade statistics
and key indices of manufacturing as well as quarterly
updates on the employment situation in the Philippines.
Whenever possible, the text of the press release
and the tables that were released with it are posted
into NSO website an hour after we start faxing the
information to our regular clients. |
| As an added service, those who
are in our web announcement mailing list receive
notice on the availability of any new press release
posting as soon as one is out. Currently, many of
those included in the web mailing list are NSO personnel.
However, a web-interface is being developed so that
any visitor to our press release pages can freely
subscribe and unsubscribe himself from the appropriate
mailing list. |
| Another value added service which
can be offered is the actual sending of the press
release - text and table - to the user. However,
since this would entail additional resources, we
are considering opening such a service as a subscription-for-a-fee
service instead. |
| As more and more agencies are
realizing the strategic importance of maintaining
a website, website visitors will find more and more
websites mirroring some of the information that
is found in the NSO website. This should be a good
development for us as this would mean that we are
doing a good job at disseminating the information
we generate. |
| File
transfers between field and central offices |
| Besides using the current web
server for external dissemination, the office also
maintains internal webpages for distributing program
and files. These pages are hidden and password protected. |
| Development
Strategy |
| When the NSO first started to
build its web site, the development of the web pages
was handled by IT personnel who were not with the
subject matter units. This approach was adopted
when the NSO website was still in its infancy --when
the concern of the Office was more on the establishment
of its web infrastructure. Now, however, that the
infrastructure had been established and the work
left to be done deal more with data updating and
data loading, the task of web page development will
be gradually devolved to concerned subject matter
units to ensure that data made available in the
web are always kept up to date. |
|
| APPLICATIONS
FOR DEVELOPMENT |
| Aside from those already implemented,
there are also some initiatives being carried out
that use the Internet. |
| Web-based
Data Collection |
| Web-based forms present a novel
idea for collecting data from the web. If ordering
information can be filled out on web pages, received
and validated by the concerned organization, then
the same principle can be used to collect population-related
data. This is not yet being implemented at the NSO
right now but a test web page intended to collect
key manufacturing data from respondent establishments
is being developed. If this test setup is found
practical and efficient, the same approach may also
be adopted for the Census 2000 data collection.
However, such web-based data collection for the
census may cover only a small segment of the society
as the percent of Internet users among households
in the Philippines may not yet be that sizable.
Confidentiality of information provided will remain
a key issue in such data collection scheme. |
| Map-Oriented
Web Dissemination |
| In their latest suite of Integrated
Microcomputer Processing System (IMPS) software
for the Windows environment, the International Programs
Center (IPC) of the U.S. Bureau of Census included
a Map Viewer component. This program enables the
display of statistical results through the use of
thematic maps and, at the same time, provides the
capability to view the data at various geographic
levels. Very recently, the IPC has also been doing
work so that the map viewing function may be implemented
in a web environment. Using data and digital maps
from the 1995 Census of Population, the NSO is currently
doing some trials in this web-based and map-oriented
dissemination. The trials are being done so that
some suggestions may be given for the overall improvement
of the said softwares as well as to have early exposure
of the NSO personnel. A possible target application
would be the Census 2000 results. |
| Web-based
Table Generation |
| Still another ongoing development
by the IPC is the web-based version of the Crosstab
component of the IMPS for Windows suite. Simply
described, a user can initiate a tabulation from
the web by specifying the table parameters desired.
The raw data files and the data dictionaries all
reside in the server. After table generation process
is completed, the user may view (or download) the
resulting table using his browser software the tabulation
results. The NSO is also involved in the testing
of this software again using its own set of data. |
| Census
2000 Internal Newsgroup |
| An internal NSO forum for the
Census 2000 will also be established. This newsgroup
will provide a venue for the open sharing of ideas
and suggestions on various concerns and issues related
to the coming census undertaking. While formal committees
and working groups will be created to work on the
actual census preparations, the forum would provide
a facility for promoting awareness of and generating
participation and appreciation for the ongoing preparations. |
|
| EXPANDED
INTERNET ACCESS OF FIELD OFFICES |
| In preparation for the Census
2000 activities, the NSO is currently moving to
have all its regional offices gain access to the
Internet this year. The Office is also targeting
that all the provincial offices will be for an Internet-based
coordination before the start of the census field
operations. |
|
| CONCLUSION |
| While the NSO can not claim extensive
experience with the Internet, it can adopt Internet-based
technologies in its statistical operations if only
to improve the quality and timeliness of the release
of its statistics. A good showcase for the case
in point can be the 2000 Census of the Population. |
|
