Working Party on the Application of  New Technology to Population Data
Third meeting
7-9 January 1999
Bali

• Abbreviations
• Descriptions
  • Introduction
  • Results of the survey
  1. A. Use of information technology in the national statistical system
  2. Technology used for population censuses and surveys
  3. Tabulation, data storage and dissemination

1. On the recommendation of the Working Party on the Application of New Technology to Population Data, the secretariat conducted a survey on the application of new technology to population data. A questionnaire was sent to all 56 national statistical offices in the region in April 1998. At the time of compilation of this paper, 29 completed questionnaires had been received. The secretariat wishes to express its appreciation to all those national statistical offices which have responded to the survey. One returned questionnaire could not be used as it was not in a working language of the secretariat; for some others, information on some aspects was incomplete. The results presented in this report are thus based on 28 questionnaires but, owing to the non-availability of information on some items, not all the questionnaires could be used for each and every table.

2. Taking into account analytical considerations as well as the volume of information involved and the limitation on the length of Committee documents, the information collected is provided as a summary for three groups of countries/areas given below. However, information at the national level for some basic items is provided in detail in table 1.

Group 1: Developed members of ESCAP
Australia
Japan
New Zealand

Group 2: Members and associate members of ESCAP which are either newly industrializing economies or developing members of OECD
Hong Kong, China 
Republic of Korea 
Singapore
Turkey

Group 3: Developing members and associate members of ESCAP
American Samoa  Malaysia

Armenia Bangladesh Bhutan China Fiji Guam Indonesia Islamic Republic of Iran Lao People's Democratic Republic Macau

Maldives Marshall Islands Myanmar Pakistan Philippines Samoa Sri Lanka Thailand Turkmenistan

3. Table 1 provides information on the size of the country/area, the personnel resources of its national statistical office, and personal computers (PCs) and hardware resources. In all three developed countries of the region, Australia, Japan and New Zealand, as well as in Singapore, there is at least one PC on the desk of each staff member. Marshall Islands is perhaps a special case in that vacancies in a small national statistical office can easily distort figures. American Samoa and the Republic of Korea are very well equipped with PCs. Most national statistical office staff of Bhutan; Fiji; Guam; Hong Kong, China; Lao People's Democratic Republic; and Macau have access to PCs. Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Samoa, Thailand and Turkey are less well endowed in terms of PC accessibility as there are 270-440 staff per 100 PCs. The survey results indicate that PC accessibility is by far the lowest in the national statistical offices of the three South Asian countries with large NSOs (Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Lanka).

4. Regarding the availability of network-connected PCs, all staff of the national statistical offices of Australia, Japan, New Zealand and Singapore have their PC connected to a network. More than half of the statistical personnel in Macau and the Republic of Korea are connected, while the figure is around one third in Fiji; Hong Kong, China; Lao People's Democratic Republic; and Maldives. In Armenia, American Samoa and Malaysia, there are six or seven staff per network-connected PC, and as many as 14 in Indonesia and the Philippines. The figures are higher still for Bangladesh, Myanmar, Pakistan and Turkey.

5. Figures 1 to 3 suggest that there is a wide gap between developed and developing countries in the application of technology in national statistical offices.

6. Table 2 shows that mainframe computers are still common in the national statistical offices in the region, irrespective of the stage of development. However, when it comes to the application of communication technology, the gap between developed and developing countries is quite visible. While all the national statistical offices in groups 1 and 2 have e-mail, half of the national statistical offices in developing countries lack that facility. Similarly, not only do all the national statistical offices in groups 1 and 2 have Internet connection, most of them have leased lines. By contrast, only 12 out of 21 national statistical offices in developing countries reported the availability of Internet connection, which predominantly depended on dial-up networking.

7. Information provided in the survey, but not tabulated in the present document, also points to a significant gap between developed and developing countries in terms of the actual number of staff who have access to modern information technology facilities such as the Internet. In one developing country, in the national statistical office, with more than 4,000 staff, the Internet is available to only 10 users at a time. On the other hand, in the developed countries and more advanced national statistical offices it is available for hundreds of users. In one developed country, although access to the Internet is available to all staff, users are restricted as a matter of policy to a browser which does not support frames, and the sites they can visit are limited.

8. Table 2 also provides information on the use of other IT components such as local area networks (LAN), scanning devices, and geographic information systems (GIS) for mapping. Manual mapping is still the most common method used by developing countries.