Distinguished Participants, Working Party
Members and Dear Colleagues,
I have great pleasure in welcoming you all
to this Workshop on Application of New Information
Technology to Population Data. This Workshop
is being organized under a project funded by
the United Nations Population Fund, known as
UNFPA.
I wish to express my sincere gratitude to UNFPA
for its generous financial support to the project.
As some of you may be aware, the project is
being implemented under the guidance of a Working
Party on the Application of New Technology to
Population Data, which consists of experts from
the national statistical offices of nine countries/areas,
namely, Australia, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Japan,
Macau, New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore and
Thailand. Among the outputs of the project
are three guidelines on the application of new
IT to population data collection and capture,
modern mapping and GIS, and to population data
dissemination. Under the guidance of the
Working Party, ESCAP has also commissioned three
pilot applications. These concern uses
of GPS for preparation of census enumeration
by Bangladesh; imaging technology by Indonesia;
and uses of GIS for census operation by the
Philippines. Drafts of these guidelines
and pilot project reports will be made available
to you as background documents.
I wish to convey our thanks to the members
of the Working Party for their untiring efforts
in the successful implementation of the project,
for the organization of this Workshop, and for
serving as resource persons. Most of them
are present here, others will join later.
The collaboration that ESCAP has been receiving
from the organizations represented in the Working
Party is exemplary and now you all will be benefiting
from it. We are grateful for their technical
cooperation and support to the project.
The project has also benefited from the cooperation
extended by our statistical training arm, the
Statistical Institute for Asia and the Pacific,
the UNFPA Country Support Teams in the region,
and the United Nations Statistics Division.
A number of private sector organizations have
also lent their support by arranging presentations
and demonstrations relevant to the topics to
be discussed in the Workshop; we are grateful
to them for their substantive contributions.
This is yet another example of the growing cooperation
between the private sector institutions and
the United Nations. Finally, I should
also like to express our thanks to the Governments,
which have sent participants to this Workshop,
for their cooperation and for releasing officials,
and, in several cases, for funding the participation
of their nominees. This Workshop is without
doubt a significant gathering of census/survey
statisticians and IT specialists with rich and
varied backgrounds and experiences.
Distinguished Participants, Ladies and Gentlemen,
Population statistics constitute as fundamental
information needed for effective development
planning, policy formulation, programme implementation,
as well as for monitoring of social and economic
progress made. Population and housing
censuses and demographic surveys are major sources
of population statistics. Although the
tradition of census taking is well established
in the region, there are wide differences among
countries in terms of scope of the census, timely
release of data, disaggregation of statistics,
modes of dissemination, data utilization and
the application of new technology. In
1998, ESCAP conducted a survey on the application
of new technology to population data collection,
processing and dissemination. It revealed
large disparities among countries in information
technology infrastructure in statistical offices.
The advanced NSOs, which utilized new IT across
all operations, were able to develop and customize
applications for their own purposes. On
the other hand, many developing countries were
still grappling with the effective utilization
of new IT. However, this very diversity
in the region also offers opportunities for
sharing of information and technical cooperation
among countries.
In many countries of the ESCAP region, population
census is the centre of attention of the
data users, particularly when the civil registration
and vital statistics systems are not reliable
and the household survey programme is small.
For this and other reasons, it is important
that census data are made available promptly
and accessible in different degrees of aggregation
and modes of dissemination. In this
regard, the application of information technology
plays a crucial role as it provides opportunities
for reducing costs of census operations, improving
the timeliness and quality of statistics and
promoting data utilization. The new information
technology offers multitudes of options for
the national statistical offices to provide
easier access to their information resources,
develop new products and services, and provide
faster response to client data requests.
In particular, population census is very opportune
to intensive utilization of IT as it involves
large volumes of similar forms and repetitive
tables. In the area of data collection
and capture, OMR/OCR, computer and telephone
assisted interviewing and coding have resulted
in remarkable gains for several countries.
A great deal of progress can be achieved in
other countries by sharing these and similar
experiences of exploiting information technology
for statistical purposes. Hence, the major
aim of this Workshop is to promote the sharing
of such information.
By sharing information and experiences, this
Workshop hopes to sensitize participants to
the opportunities that modern information technology
provides in population data operations.
I hope that the information provided here through
a series of presentations, demonstrations and
background documentation would enrich and further
improve your understanding of new technologies
relevant to population censuses and surveys.
They will also provide opportunities to discuss
advantages and constraints of important new
information technologies applicable to the planning,
conduct and processing of population censuses
and surveys.
Distinguished Participants, Ladies and Gentlemen,
I have mentioned just a few of the important
areas and issues that you will be considering
during the next seven working days. You
should bear in mind that the Workshop is not
designed to cover the entire spectrum of technology
applications, simply because it is an impossible
task to accomplish in a single workshop.
The Working Party selected a few key areas of
new IT for this Workshop. Within the selected
domain, you have excellent opportunities to
find out facts about the latest IT innovations
and discuss their applicability to your own
circumstances. I encourage you to take
part actively in all deliberations and view
critically any patent solutions that might be
offered to you. There is no doubt that
information technology is beneficial for all
of us, but that conviction should not prevent
you from making baseline technology decisions
carefully, based on proper analysis of all costs
and benefits. I would also encourage you
to share the information as broadly as possible
when you return to your home countries.
ESCAP will make the Workshop material globally
accessible on the project Web site, which already
contains a large number of technical documents
accumulated by the Working Party.
Given the expertise and experience gathered
in this room, I am confident that your discussions
will be very fruitful and will lead to a set
of suggestions and recommendations that will
serve as guidelines to governments in their
efforts of exploiting information technology
for statistical purposes.
I wish you all success in your deliberations,
a very pleasant stay in Bangkok, and a safe
journey back home.
Thank you.
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