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

The National Statistical Office has been conducting the population censuses every ten years since 1960. The next Population and Housing Census will be in the year of 2000 despite the economic crisis in Thailand. The budget for the census will be about 724 million Baht or about $19.6 million (in December 1998, $1 was approximately 37 Baht). Most of the budget will be spent on the field operation. The Thai population in the year of 2000 is estimated to be about 62 million and the number of households will be about 16 million.

Census operation is very expensive and in order to save cost the sample census enumeration technique similar to that which was used for the 1970, 1980 and 1990 censuses will be adapted. For the last three censuses in Bangkok Metropolis and non-municipal areas all persons and household were listed and simultaneously enumerated with the short form questionnaire except for the 20 percent sample of households which were enumerated with the long form questionnaire, in municipal areas outside Bangkok Metropolis all persons and households were listed and enumerated using the long form questionnaire. For the 2000 census, in Bangkok Metropolis, municipal area and non-municipal areas all persons and households will be listed and simultaneously enumerated with the short form questionnaire except for the sample households which will be enumerated with the long form questionnaire. The sample size is 20 percent for Bangkok Metropolis and non-municipal areas and 50 percent for municipal areas.

One of the major concern of the NSO is the timeliness in producing the results. In 1993 NSO has adopted the decentralization policy, especially on processing the census and survey data. Nowaday, manual editing and keyboard data entry is carried out at statistical provincial offices in all provinces of Thailand before sending the data in the form of computer media (diskettes) to the central office in Bangkok for further process (editing, tabulating) by using the mainframe computer.

Local area network (LAN) linked to the internet has been available at the central office of the NSO and three provinces adjacent to Bangkok since the end of 1997. Statistical processes do not yet necessary utilize the intranet facilities. All provincial statistical offices are expected to be able to connect to the host computer at the central office of the NSO by a dial-up processes and internet service provider (ISP). This allows the use of e-mail, www, telnet and specially data transfer by FTP (file transfer protocol) from provinces to the main station in Bangkok in 1999.

For Thailand 2000 Population and housing Census, NSO plans to use the Intelligent Character Recognition (ICR) solution for data capture. The listing form the questionnaire for both short and long form questionnaires will be edited at the local provincial statistical office. After that the questionnaire form will be sent to the center to be data captured. According to the budget plan there will be 15 data capture centers. Three centers will station in The Northern Region, 5 centers in The Northeastern Region, 3 centers in The Central Regions, 3 for the South and one for Bangkok. Each center consists of 3 data captures connected with the microcomputers all of them are decide to stand alone. For Bangkok Metropolis the system will be a LAN system consist of a more advance data capture, a server and 6 microcomputers. After completion process the census questionnaire each data capture together with a the microcomputer will be distributed a major province, with and alternative plan that every province will be equipped with at least one data capture device.

At the early stage of census planning, manual editing, coding and data keying, were planned to process at the provincial statistical office except for Bangkok Metropolis, the process will be done at the central. About 570 temporary employees would be recruited to do the manual editing and coding and plan to finish within 16 months and about 720 temporary employees for keyboard data keying for the period of about 18 months. The report on Population and Housing Census by provinces will be released in the year of 2002. NSO then adopted the ICR technology, will the same amount of budget, 25 millions Baht will be spent on the data capture devices. The scanner that can read double side questionnaire forms with the speed of around 60 pages per minute that can scan all the questionnaire form within 9 months. The rest of the budget will be spent on 1750 temporary employees for manual editing and coding for 7 months and only 150 temporary employees will be hired for operating the data capture devices. The report on Population and Housing Census by each province, region and the whole kingdom will be released within the year of 2001 one year sooner than the original plan.

The publications that the NSO plans to publish are:

Preliminary report that shows the number of population by sex and the number of households for each province, region and whole kingdom.

Advance report that shows important population characteristics by region and the whole kingdom.

Reports on population and housing data by province, region and the whole kingdom.

Series of analytical subject reports from a 1 percent sample tabulation on selected characteristics such as migration, fertility and economic characteristics.

Some important data in the table form will be available on the internet.

The more detailed information of both population and housing characteristics in the table form will also be available on floppy disk.

The introduction of new technology depend very much on the financial situation of the country. However the policy of decentralization, the introduction of internet infrastructure, improving the data base system, adopting ICR for data capture will promise the improvement of quicker information not just only for the census result but for all other surveys require by all users.