Working Party on the Application of New Technology to Population Data
Fourth meeting
6-9 July 1999
Manila

• Background of the Workshop
• Discussions in Bali
• Proposal by the secretariat
• ANNEX: Workshop content and materials, and responsibilities for its preparation and conduct

1. The Mid-Term Review (MTR) of the project RAS/96/P12, conducted by the UNFPA and ESCAP in July 1998, proposed to add a two-week training workshop, to be held towards the end of 1999. The basic rationale for proposing the workshop was to augment the impact of the project. The MTR described the training workshop a forum where the applicability of guidelines/manuals produced under the project could be reviewed, but did not give much other guidance on the Workshop content. At that point, it was envisaged that about 15 persons from various countries, including countries of the members of the Working Party would attend, and that resource persons would be invited from SIAP and the UNFPA Country Support Teams.

2. As agreed in the MTR, the secretariat made immediately a proposal for extension of the project to the end of 1999. That proposal included a preliminary budget for the workshop, and a tentative list of participating countries. Subsequently, the UNFPA allocated funds for implementing the Workshop in 1999.

3. In its previous meeting in Bali, January 1999, the Working Party had a preliminary discussion about the Workshop, but due to the limited time available for discussion, it agreed that the details would be discussed and decided upon in the next meeting.

4. The Working Party agreed that the broad objective of the Workshop would be to sensitize participants to the opportunities that modern information technology provided in population data operations and to improve the guidelines that would have been produced by then under the project. The Working Party felt that the duration of two weeks, as proposed by the MTR, was too long for the Workshop as many NSOs found it increasingly difficult to release personnel for extended periods. It proposed to make the schedule relatively intensive and recommended to use the savings to increase the number of participating countries.

5. The Working Party also agreed that the Workshop should be targeted at IT and statistical managers who had influence on the selection of technologies for census and survey operations. The secretariat was asked to make a proposal for participating countries using its own knowledge about the region and the results of the survey conducted under the project. 

6. Apart from conventional lectures, the participants should be given hands-on opportunities and time to test and study new applications. The members of the Working Party agreed to act as resource persons in the workshop and be responsible for arranging vendor demonstrations in areas they worked on. Other resource persons could be invited from United Nations agencies, elsewhere in the region, and from leading organizations outside. The Working Party agreed that the participants of the workshop would benefit from product demonstrations by representatives of hardware and software providers, but noted that such opportunities should not be restricted to particular organizations.

7. The guidelines and pilot applications developed under the project would be used as among the training material for the Workshop. The Working Party requested the resource persons of the workshop to take into account the survey results in preparing their inputs and presentations.

8. The Working Party discussed a basic outline for of the Workshop. In that first plan, days 1 and 2 would introduce IT in general, and on days 3 - 6 each group would be exposed to a specific guideline, and would be asked to discuss various issues involved based on their experiences and comment on the content of the guidelines. Each group would be asked to produce a report. The coordinators would introduce "their" guidelines and lead the discussion. On the final day, the groups would get together in the plenary to discuss each group report and hold a general discussion. The final output will be recommendations for revising the guidelines and an overall report of the Workshop. However, the feasibility of splitting the Workshop into groups was questioned as working in many groups tied up a lot of resources.

9. The secretariat's proposal for the Workshop builds on the discussions that the Working Party had in Bali. A tentative outline for the Workshop is given in the Annex. It is formatted as a worksheet that allows expansion of substantive topics and requires identification or confirmation of Workshop materials and resource persons. The Working Party should scrutinize the outline carefully and bring the level of detail in all modules to the same level, based on information (especially the guidelines) that becomes available in Manila.

10. The Working Party is requested

1. to confirm the exact target group for the Workshop
2. to confirm the venue for the Workshop, including the number and size of meeting rooms and the minimum requirements for hardware, software and network connectivity for the training environment. The Working Party agreed in Bali that the Workshop should be held in a venue where participants had new technology readily accessible.
3. to review that the proposed modules are feasible and in desirable order, to review the topics covered or missing in each module, and to give weights for each component by reviewing the time allocation. (The proposed working hours for the Workshop are from 0830-1130 and 1300-1600, amounting to six effective hours per day)
4. to decide whether training requirements and human resource development issues are best handled within each topic or taken up separately for each module.
5. to decide the outline(s) for participants' country papers and/or other contributions to be prepared before the Workshop, and to advise the secretariat on the desirable content of the invitation letter. 
6. to identify resource persons and requisite materials for each Workshop session as far as possible.
7. to agree on responsibilities, including back-up persons, among its members.
8. to review the list of participating countries, which is based on the budget proposal to the UNFPA. Now that the Workshop duration is three days shorter than in the original budget, 3-4 countries could be added to the list. ESCAP is not in a position to fund participants from developed member countries, other than the Working Party members (who attend in their expert capacity). The Working Party may also choose countries that should be invited to attend at their own expense.

(i) to agree on the method and responsibilities of revising the guidelines/manuals after the Workshop as they affect the conduct of the Workshop. (See also document STAT/WPA(4)/9 on the future programme of work)

11. Based on the discussions in Manila, the ESCAP secretariat would prepare and circulate for comments a revised outline and a tentative time schedule for the Workshop, book and organize equipment for the meeting rooms, invite participants, and coordinate the inputs from the Working Party members.