1. Organization of the meeting
2. Proceedings of the meeting
   1. Review of the project activities and unfinished work
      1. Awareness cum training package
      2. Guidelines
      3. Report on the pilot applications
      4. Newsletters
   2. Preparations for the Workshop on Population Data Analysis, Storage and Dissemination Technologies
   3. Review of the achievements of the Working Party and recommendations for future action

1. The sixth and final meeting of the Working Party on the Application of New Technology to Population Data was organized by the Statistics Division of ESCAP at Bangkok on 26 March 2001.

2. The meeting was attended by member experts from the following nine countries/areas: Australia; Bangladesh; Indonesia; Japan; Macao, China; New Zealand; Philippines; Singapore and Thailand.  Specialists from the UNFPA Country Technical Services Teams in Bangkok and Kathmandu, the Statistical Institute for Asia and the Pacific (SIAP) and the United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD) also participated. 

3. The Working Party agreed that the secretariat representatives should chair the meeting and then adopted the following substantive agenda:

1. Review of the project activities and unfinished work:
   1. Awareness cum training package;
   2. Guidelines;
   3. Report on the pilot applications;
   4. Newsletters.
2. Preparations for the Workshop on Population Data Analysis, Storage and Dissemination Technologies.
3. Review of the achievements of the Working Party and recommendations for future action.
4. Other matters.

4. The Working Party recalled its earlier recommendation that only one CD-ROM should be produced to disseminate all the project outputs, including guidelines, experiences of the pilot applications and the awareness package. The Working Party recommended that SIAP should also make full use of material provided by the final workshop.  It then provided preliminary comments on the draft framework that SIAP had produced on a CD-ROM; those comments related to search features, use of keywords and multimedia effects, and inclusion of date of last update on all pages. The participants agreed to send further comments by email by a deadline that was to be provided by SIAP.

5. The Working Party welcomed the offer of the Department of Statistics, Singapore, to provide additional technical material to be used on the CD-ROM, and encouraged other members to do the same.

6. The Working Party welcomed the idea of including on the CD-ROM a training component utilizing technical information, the three guidelines and the reports on the three pilot applications compiled under the project. It also welcomed the intention to include in the final product other technical documents and links to relevant material and sites on the Internet.  The Working Party noted that although the component initially served the needs of training courses conducted by SIAP, it could be developed further to become a distance education course.  The Working Party hoped that the new Director of SIAP would accord high priority to completing the CD-ROM as soon as possible.

7. Welcoming the intention of SIAP to publish the content of the CD-ROM also on a web site (which was easy as the interface was based on HTML and javascript), the Working Party hoped that SIAP could regularly update the content related to statistical software and applications as part of its own curriculum development.  In that regard, the Working Party noted the usefulness of maintaining links to other relevant sites that were regularly updated.

8. The Working Party reviewed the draft template for the foreword to the guidelines and agreed that it contained sufficient disclaimers and acknowledgments.  Noting that in some cases outdated guidance could be more harmful than no guidance at all, the Working Party emphasized the importance of having a visible disclaimer regarding the date the guideline was prepared.  That could be achieved, for instance, by inserting on a page header or equivalent place in printed and electronic versions the month (and year) of substantive completion of the guidelines.

9. The Working Party agreed that the names of the experts should be organized alphabetically by last name and that their organizations should be indicated after their names.  The Working Party recommended adding acknowledgements of SIAP's contribution to the guidelines and of the facilities and support provided by the Singapore Department of Statistics, Statistics Indonesia and the Philippines National Statistical Office during the Working Party meetings away from Bangkok.

10. As some members felt that some information attributed to their organizations was so outdated that it might affect ESCAP's reputation, the Working Party agreed to review the current versions of the guidelines within the same week and give further advice regarding the release of printed versions.

11. The Working Party heard verbal progress reports by the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, Statistics Indonesia and the Philippines National Statistical Office. All reported that the application activities had been completed but that the written reports had not been finalized yet.  The Working Party urged the responsible offices to complete those reports as soon as possible and recommended that the secretariat circulate them among the members for information and any comments.  The secretariat reminded the pilot countries about their commitment to prepare an article for the project newsletter about the outcome and experiences gained in each pilot application.

12. The Working Party requested members to contribute articles to the two remaining issues of the project newsletter. It agreed that the invitation to contribute articles should be extended to the resource persons attending the final workshop; they could be invited to submit articles based on their papers and presentations.  A few suggestions for the topics to be covered were made. The secretariat hoped to receive articles soon as possible after the final workshop.

13. The Working Party reviewed the tentative time schedule for the Workshop on Population Data Analysis, Storage and Dissemination Technologies, which it was organizing together with the secretariat commencing the following day.  Minor adjustments were made to the titles of the moderated country paper sessions to reflect the fact that the recommendations of the previous workshop (Workshop on Application of New Information Technology to Population Data, Bangkok, 12-20 October 1999) would be taken into account when drafting the Workshop recommendations.

14. The Working Party agreed to share the chairmanship of the Workshop among its members as follows:  Mr David Archer sessions 2.1 and 5.11, Ms Carmelita N Ericta sessions 2.2 - 2.7, Ms Rosemary Crocker sessions 3.1 - 3.6, Mr Edward Lim sessions 4.1 - 4.3, and Mr Sihar Lumtantobing sessions 5.1 - 5.10.

15. Reviewing the preliminary statistics compiled by the secretariat on the attendance and the voluminous documentation presented in the earlier project meetings, the Working Party recommended the inclusion of summary statistics about the beneficiary member and associate member governments (NSOs and census offices).

16. The members reflected on what their participation in the Working Party since 1997 had given to their organizations and to them personally. The members noted that a wealth of useful technical information had been compiled, written and shared under the project.  Equally useful had been the personal contact network formed between the Working Party members, other contributing experts and the secretariat.

17. Several members described practical problems that they had been able to resolve and decisions that had become easier to make because of the contacts and the information shared during the project.  The evaluation and procurement of data capture technology for the 2000/2001 round of censuses in Bangladesh; Macao, China; and Thailand were noted as examples.

18. One member explained that the substantive knowledge and the references of the Working Party had helped them to talk on equal terms with a provider of data capture solutions and to resolve problems satisfactorily.  A member from a technologically advanced country said that the preparation of contributions had helped them to crystallize the ultimate purpose of their own systems development when they had to explain it to audiences with varying technological backgrounds.

19. Noting that some of the project outputs, especially the guidelines, the pilot applications and the awareness-cum-training package had been significantly delayed, the Working Party recommended that, to the extent possible, the secretariat should incorporate in future project designs mechanisms and provisions that prevented such lapses from occurring.  The Working Party felt that any voluntary coordinating responsibility, such as that of a guidelines coordinator, should be for a limited duration.

20. Regretting the delays in project implementation, the secretariat explained that it had a very small operational staff implementing a relatively large number of technical assistance projects; in addition, unexpected staff absences over the past several months had exacerbated the situation.  When planning large projects in that kind of setting, the secretariat usually attempted to include in them resources for hiring qualified project implementation staff; however, few donors nowadays entertained that type of design.

21. Returning to the primarily positive experiences, the Working Party agreed that IT training workshops, such as the one organized in October 1999, were particularly useful for census and statistics offices in the region.  The Working Party also agreed that it was very difficult to establish and maintain a functional electronic discussion network without occasionally bringing participants together.

22. Having interacted for the past four years with each other, the Working Party members had become convinced of the benefits of regular sharing of information on IT developments related to population census and survey processing in particular and to statistical IT in general.  Agreeing that most developing countries in the region would not be able to attend training events and forums sharing IT experiences without external support, the Working Party recommended that the secretariat should seek funding from donors for such activities.  It also recommended that the secretariat look into the possibility of creating an annual forum for sharing statistical IT experiences.

23. Finally, the Working Party shared views on the emerging technologies affecting statistical and census offices.  Among them were data collection through the Internet, data security issues, data warehousing and online analytical processing, and standards for exchanging statistical data (statistical XML).