The second meeting of the Working Party on the Application of New Technology to Population Data was hosted by the Department of Statistics Singapore from 1 to 3 April 1998.  It was attended by all members.  An invited expert from New Zealand also attended, who became the ninth member of the Working Party.  An expert from the United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD) and the Director of the Statistical Institute for Asia and the Pacific (SIAP) also participated.  The focus of the meeting was the use of Internet applications at various stages of population data collection and dissemination.

The Working Party also reviewed the progress of the project since its last meeting, and discussed, among others, the following topics:

1. Overall approach to Census 2000: The Case of Singapore.
2. Use of secured Internet in data collection and dissemination in Singapore.
3. Internet applications at various stages of population data collection and dissemination: experience in the region.
4. Useful database applications and systems.
5. Proposal on an awareness package on the application of modern technology to population data

The Singapore Department of Statistics provided host facilities and made several  presentations on the application of IT in practical statistical work.  Their presentations included the tabulation package FASTAB, Time Series Retrieval and Dissemination Database (TREND), and Commercial Establishment Information System (CEIS).

Each of the participating countries presented and shared their experience on Internet applications at various states of population data collection and dissemination.

• The Working Party reviewed the questionnaire prepared by the secretariat for a survey to assess the use of information technology in population data collection, processing and dissemination.  It noted that the results of the survey would be submitted to  the ESCAP Committee on Statistics after a review by the Working Party.  Recognizing that the survey would provide important background information for various activities under the project, including the guidelines, the Working Party made detailed recommendations on the content and format of the questionnaire and asked the secretariat to dispatch the revised questionnaire soon after the meeting.
• Expressing appreciation to New Zealand of its acceptance to become a member of the working party, the Working Party amended the  "Mode of Functioning of the Working Party" to reflect the increased number (nine) of its membership.
• The Working Party made recommendations regarding the work underway, including the administrative arrangements for pilot studies on the preparation of the guidelines.  It recommended that the guidelines should be self-contained, be prepared with a view of benefiting developing countries, and that their focus should not be limited to the domains of the pilot applications.  It also recommended that the focus of the first two issues of the project newsletter be limited to the Working Party meetings already held and requested the secretariat to publish them as soon as possible.
• The Working Party requested the secretariat to dedicate a section to the Working Party at the Statistics Division's website, featuring the newsletter, meeting documents, recommendations, guidelines and other work done in the project.
• Noting that web publishing was a standard practice to disseminate information, the Working Party requested all members to provide their future contributions in electronic format.  To alleviate the work load of the secretariat, the Working Party encouraged the provision of meeting documents in HTML, or in a format that was easy to convert into HTML.
• The Working Party decided that the third meeting would be held tentatively in the second half of October 1998, focusing on population data capture, coding, verification and workflow.  Noting that Indonesia was preparing its pilot application on imaging involving evaluation of alternative technologies for handling the very large volume of census forms, the Working Party considered Jakarta to be one suitable venue for its third meeting.  It approved the provisional agenda and documentation plan for the third meeting, as proposed by the subgroup on imaging technologies.  The fourth meeting was tentatively scheduled for March 1999 with a focus on Geographic Information System (GIS).

• Noting the positive experiences of Singapore and other countries in using the Internet in data dissemination, the Working Party encouraged in general all statistical offices to establish an effective Internet presence, and use it innovatively in census and survey operations.
• The Working Party noted the innovative efforts of some countries in using the Internet for data collection and encouraged them to share their experiences with other countries.
• The Working Party recommended that NSOs adopt an incremental and modular approach to developing a website, especially when resources are limited.
• Noting that several advanced NSOs were depending on e-mail for their daily communications which had significantly increased their productivity, the Working Party recommended an extensive use of e-mail and other Internet applications by all NSOs in census planning, document sharing, data transfer and other related functions.
• The Working Party noted that to achieve maximum benefits from the new technologies, changes might be necessary, among other things, in organizational structures, coordination arrangements and individual responsibilities.  It recommended that NSOs should take a critical look at their population data operations as a whole with a view to "reengineering" them to meet the requirements and opportunities of Internet technologies.  It stressed that systematic training of staff was essential to instill a holistic approach that took the technology into account from the beginning.
• The Working Party recommended that metadata be included as an essential component at census websites as they added considerably to the value of population data.   The metadata could include such information as the general organization of the census, coverage, census forms, instructions to field workers, methods followed in derivation of numeric results, accuracy, sampling methodology, and references to published reports.
• Recognizing that there was a glut of information competing for users' attention, the Working Party felt that it was necessary to promote statistical websites by using all available means, including announcements on national and global search engines.
• Discussing other ways to increase the visibility of population data, the Working Party recommended equipping websites with a search facility, preferably the types allowing open text searches; it further recommended systematic use of HTML metakeys and descriptive titles that were automatically picked up by referencing engines and "crawlers".
• Mindful that a large number of Internet users in developing countries were behind a narrow bandwidth connection, the Working Party cautioned authors not to include large graphics components on pages that made download times prohibitive.  The Working Party emphasized that it was important for the developers to test web pages with low-end browsers that did not support graphics, and provided a text-only alternative.
• The Working Party noted that the development of electronic commerce technologies and secure data encryption had opened up new possibilities for commercial statistical products.  It urged NSOs to consider that new area as another means of data dissemination.
• Noting the benefits of the Internet in making statistics available to users faster and in greater depth than previously, the Working Party recommended that statistical offices streamline their release approval/authorization processes to match the significant progress achieved in the technical dissemination process.
• The Working Party noted that a number of software, applications, and solutions have been developed by NSOs which can be shared among the countries/areas of the region.  It recommended that such software and applications which might be available for distribution be listed on the ESCAP homepage.   The Working Party expressed its gratitude to the Singapore Department of Statistics for identifying FASTAB as a product which could be shared in the region.
• Recognizing the importance of the influence of policy and decision makers in prioritization for budget allocations, the Working Party recommended that an awareness package could be prepared and that its content should stress the importance and purpose of census taking including the necessity of making available census data quickly to the users.  The content of the package could focus on strategies and application of technology in the various phases of census operations with a focus on speedy processing and timely dissemination of census data.  The package should be in the form of a short video with supporting documents, which should be made available for the 2000 round of censuses.

Singapore is becoming the first country in the region to use a register-based approach, combined with a tri-modal data collection strategy, to conduct a full census.  The administrative base information will be complemented by data collected during the census.  That specific collection will, however, be limited to 20 per cent samples of the population, or the size proven adequate to provide details for in-depth studies and needs of the majority of users.  The field workers would only meet citizens that could not be reached by the two other modes, namely, the Internet enumeration or computer assisted telephone interviewing (CATI).  Before deciding to embark on a register-based census, the first considerations were the quality of administrative data, computer security, a legal framework, as well as effectiveness and the costs involved.  The verification checks will also remove duplicates arising during the data collection phase.

The new register-based census model implies a shift from the actual "census night" location of people residing in Singapore towards adopting a "de jure" concept of residence status utilizing the National Database on Dwellings (NDD), which contains administrative housing information.  The integrated use of the various technologies in Census 2000 would set the foundation for the Singapore Department of Statistics IT vision for the future.

Singapore is in a better position than most other countries in the region to adopt such a high technology approach to census.  It has a well developed vital registration and administrative system, a very good communications infrastructure and is technologically advanced.  Further, it has relatively small and highly educated population with increasing computer and Internet literacy.

The Electronic Transfer of Returns (ETR) system is a new mode of collecting statistical information via the Internet.  It is a major imitative undertaken by the Singapore Department of Statistics to provide better services to the public.  The ETR infrastructure is now housed and managed by the National Computer Board of Singapore.  The Department's Business Expectations Survey (BES) is the first statistical survey to be conducted by ETR.

The ETR system provides survey respondents, 1250 establishments engaged in commerce and services, with a quick and convenient way to submit their statistical data to the Department.  Additionally, it helps to expedite survey operations.  Data transmission over the Internet is done securely using an advanced encryption algorithm.  The ETR system is expected to pave the way for future development of other Internet applications for collecting statistical data.  In the ETR system, users will be authenticated by verifying their signatures  stored in digital certificates.  Those certificates will be the electronic equivalents of the users' identification documents.  The digital certificates will be issued by a private firm.

FASTAB is a new tabulation package for population census that will be used for the forthcoming Singapore Population Census 2000.  FASTAB is a high-speed, high-volume, user-friendly, windows-based cross tabulation package with Graphical User Interfaces (GUI), operating on a Windows 95 platform. 

FASTAB, developed for the Singapore Department of Statistics, can process millions of records in the minimum time possible.  It is targeted to process 5 levels of tabulations at the speed of 3 million records per minute.  This is a marked improvement compared with available packaged software, such as TPL tables which take 40 minutes to generate. As FASTAB is a client-server application where the server handles the intensive computation, user interactions are done via the client.  Users simply specify the parameters and FASTAB does the rest.  Users also see the GUIs and use drag-and-drop capabilities with online tips.  Users can also share data sets and create new data sets from existing data fields.

FASTAB is flexible as programs written in earlier sessions can be saved, modified and reapplied to new tabulations at the click of a mouse.  The formatting of spreadsheets before and after tabulation, e.g. moving and deleting columns and rows, grouping and renaming fields, is also possible.  It allows for independent generation of data to meet specific needs as tabulations are done at the user's end.  There is no need to write specialized programs or code books and depend on the IT personnel.  This saves time and costs significantly.  Tables in FASTAB can be exported as MS Excel spreadsheets for further computing, or embedded as tables in MS Word and in PowerPoint presentations. 

For more information, please visit the Statistics Singapore Home Page at http://www.singstat.gov.sg TREND, first launched in 1996, is the front-end client for the retrieval and management of data from the Public Access Time Series (PATS) database maintained by the Singapore Department of Statistics.  Data in TREND are organized into frequency groups; a group is simply a collection of series.  For example, to locate the quarterly Gross Domestic Product data, the user would look for under the "National Accounts" subject group and the "Quarterly" frequency group.  This hierarchical structure is modeled after the Microsoft Windows File Manager, which makes data identification and retrieval simple and fast.  It is also possible to export the data from TREND to popular applications such as Excel, SAS and SPSS.