Information Communication Technology Session 9 8 INFORMATION COMMUNICATION

Information & Communication Technology Session 9. 8: INFORMATION & COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY Increasing access to, and enhancing the use of statistical information Jonathan Palmer Deputy Australian Statistician & COO Australian Bureau of Statistics 1

Information & Communication Technology ICT is a tool. i. e. the Tail, not the Dog ICT Statistics That said, the tail is a vital part of the statistics dog 2

Information & Communication Technology 1. What are the problems? 2. What are the opportunities? 3. What should we do? 3

Information & Communication Technology Problems? Too many to list! 4

Information & Communication Technology Problems? • Lack of collaboration in advancing ICT between NSO’s • Isolated NSO capabilities in terms of ICT • Lack of assistance between NSO’s • No technology/knowledge transfer • Lack of a forum of the right people Too many to list! 5

Information & Communication Technology ICT skills is an issue too. "If you only know Excel, the solution is always a spreadsheet. " - Palmer 6

Information & Communication Technology What are the opportunities? 7

Information & Communication Technology What are the opportunities? • • Emerging standards for statistical ICT (Small) Scale of PICs is an advantage Smarter, faster, cheaper technology Mobile computing Cloud computing Mobile apps Open source Popular tools: Google, Facebook, Wikipedia 8

Information & Communication Technology 9

Information & Communication Technology What should we do? • Establish governance for a strategic regional approach to ICT • Build more explicit IT outputs into TYPSS • Expand training in ICT 10

Information & Communication Technology Recommendation 1: Establish an ICT Working Group, comprised of selected ICT experts. It should be tasked with recommending to PSSC: standards and guidelines, priorities, and the case for shared facilities and infrastructure, modalities for South-South ICT cooperation. . 11

Information & Communication Technology Recommendation 2: TYPSS should include more ICT-specific outputs to drive the implementation of sustainable IT and the adoption of common systems. • E. g. All countries have a capacity to archive core data so it doesn't get lost/ destroyed in the event of a disaster 12

Information & Communication Technology TYPSS Objectives Objective 3: PICTS have their own capacity or are accessing regional capacity to undertake agreed core and some specialists statistical functions Objective 4: Improve Data accessibility and Utilization Output 4 -1: National, regional and international users have increased access to user-friendly statistical information systems and databases across key sectors. Objective 5: New and innovative statistical tools and systems have been introduced. Output 5 -2: Development and use of common tools for statistical collections Output 5 -3: Adoption of new technology for improved data collection and dissemination 13

Information & Communication Technology Recommendation 3: Expand range of ICT related training and development activities. Initial priority should be on ICT and information management for Statisticians. New, "on-demand", delivery methods need to be exploited. 14

Information & Communication Technology A lack of IT and Information Management knowledge has been identified as one of the major gaps in the degree in Official Statistics The proposed course on ‘IT and Information Management for Official Statistics’, is aimed to fill this gap. This course is to be aimed at non-IT professionals. The focus will be on the principles of good IT and Information Management taking into account the special circumstances of Pacific Island countries 15