Asia-Pacific Stats Café Series: Emerging Trend – The Use of Administrative Data in Asia-Pacific Censuses

Ms. Beaven has over thirty years of experience in government statistics, in particular data preparation and analysis.  She has also worked extensively with governments, multilateral agencies and the statistical community, most notably through the United Nations Statistics Division, ECA, ESCAP, World Bank and Paris21.

Prior to joining SD, Ms. Beaven led the Data for Development Team at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office of the United Kingdom, where she managed a global portfolio of statistical programmes to build core statistics as well as helped countries modernize their statistical systems.  She was also a leading advocate for financing for data and statistics.

Ms. Beaven has provided a wide range of technical support, from improving economic and financial statistics to estimating local population using geospatial data.  She is one of the founders of the Inclusive Data Charter, launched at the 2018 High-Level Political Forum, to mobilize political commitments and to advance inclusive and disaggregated data.  Ms. Beaven also led a programme on monitoring the Sustainable Development Goals with United Nations Statistics Division and established a data science hub with the Office for National Statistics of the United Kingdom to explore use of data science, in particular geospatial as well as big data, to monitor progress.

Ms. Beaven holds Master’s degrees in Statistical Applications in Business and Government as well as Business Administration, and a Bachelor’s degree in Geography and Geology.

Afsaneh Yazdani is a Statistician at ESCAP Statistics Division, Population and Social Statistics Section. She is currently leading a regional initiative on data integration. Before joining ESCAP in 2018, Afsaneh worked in various capacities at the Statistical Centre of Iran for more than 20 years. Afsaneh has extensive experience in official statistics with a focus on survey methodology, censuses, and register-based statistics.

Stein Terje Vikan is an independent consultant working in the areas of statistics and development. He has more than twenty years of experience working for UN and government bodies on statistics and data systems for governance. He has worked on a wide range of statistical topics, including management of surveys, analysis of survey and register data, statistical capacity building and strategic management. Previously, he worked as a senior advisor with Statistics Norway.

Mehmet Doğu Karakaya has been working for Turkish Statistical Institute since 2007. He worked for TRC2 Regional Office (Diyarbakır & Şanlıurfa Provinces) before joining Demographic Statistics Department in 2013. He has been working and contributing various demographic studies of TurkStat. Mr. Karakaya has bachelor’s degree in Statistics, master’s degrees in Technical Demography and has ongoing PhD candidateship candidate in Demography at Hacettepe University Institute of Population Studies.

Ross Watmuff is the Director of Census Futures at the Australian Bureau of Statistics.  His team leads research and use of Administrative data to support the ABS's Census, most recently conducted in August 2021.  Ross began his career at the ABS 19 years ago as a statistical methodologist, mostly in the area of household and population statistics, and currently works within the ABS's Data Strategy, Integration and Services Division.  He continues to work with a range of international partners on how traditional Census taking can be transformed in the future through greater use of administrative data.

Nashrul Wajdi also known as 'Acul' began his career as a Civil Servant in BPS – Statistics Indonesia of Bima Regency, NTB Province, since graduating from the Institute of Statistics in 2001. His interest in population and employment issues led him to continue his education in the Population and Labour Studies master’s degree and graduated in 2010. In 2011, Acul continued his career BPS Head Quarter Office at the Population and Labour Statistics Directorate. In 2012-2013, Acul served as Chief of the Labour Statistics Processing Section. In 2017, Acul completed his doctoral studies in Demography, Population Research Centre, at FSS-RuG, the Netherlands. The research theme is interregional migration in Indonesia. Several scientific articles from his study have been published, namely 'Interregional Migration Flows in Indonesia' (Sojourn, 2015), 'Gravity Models of Interregional Migration in Indonesia (Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies, 2017) and' Inter-regional Migration in Indonesia: A Micro

Approach '(Journal of Population Research, 2017). Currently Acul serves as a senior statistician at Demographic Statistics Division at BPS – Statistics Indonesia.

Petra Nahmias is Chief of the Population and Social Statistics Section at UNESCAP, having recently taken up this role. She previously led the statistics team at UNHCR, working on a wide variety of statistical and demographic issues related to forced displacement and statelessness. A sociologist-demographer by training, she has further experience in both the international and national statistical systems including the United Nations Population Division, the UK Department for International Development and the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics.