SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

In or­der to col­lect the da­ta that can be used to guide na­tion­al poli­cies, the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice (CSO) needs more staff.

This ac­cord­ing to the CSO’s di­rec­tor of sta­tis­tics, An­dre Blan­chard, who was speak­ing be­fore a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee meet­ing on Fri­day on the ef­fi­cien­cy and ef­fec­tive­ness of the CSO. The meet­ing in­clud­ed of­fi­cials from the Min­istry of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment, the line min­istry for the CSO.

Blan­chard said the CSO has been work­ing with sev­er­al in­ter­na­tion­al or­gan­i­sa­tions and cer­tain da­ta gaps have been iden­ti­fied in re­ports pro­duced by the CSO—in­clud­ing child sta­tis­tics, youth sta­tis­tics and gen­der sta­tis­tics.

“We have just been pro­duc­ing the bare min­i­mum and part­ly be­cause of staff re­stric­tions in terms of avail­able re­sources that when we talk about mov­ing to the new or­gan­i­sa­tion and hav­ing an en­hanced start­ing struc­ture, it will re­al­ly help in hav­ing an ad­vanced da­ta col­lec­tion be­cause the CSO does not pro­duce all the da­ta,” Blan­chard said.

He said a na­tion­al cen­sus, which is done once every ten years, is due in 2022.

Blan­chard said the CSO has been seek­ing ad­vice from the Min­istry of Health on how to safe­ly car­ry out their du­ties dur­ing the pan­dem­ic.

He al­so wants to use a hy­brid ap­proach to da­ta col­lec­tion—in­clud­ing face-to-face in­ter­views, over-the-phone in­ter­views and web-based in­ter­views.

But Blan­chard said cit­i­zens did not have to wor­ry about their per­son­al in­for­ma­tion be­ing leaked as the CSO op­er­at­ed un­der very strict guide­lines.

“Our staff pays great at­ten­tion to keep da­ta in con­fi­dence and all mem­bers of CSO have to take an oath of se­cre­cy and there are se­vere penal­ties in­clud­ing jail time for re­veal­ing for da­ta. We have al­ways tak­en great con­cern about keep­ing da­ta in con­fi­dence,” Blan­chard said.

Da­ta from these in­ter­views will be up­loaded in­to tablets and com­put­ers, so the CSO can pop­u­late its web­site with da­ta that the pub­lic can ac­cess.

Blan­chard said the CSO was work­ing with a con­sul­tant from the In­ter­na­tion­al De­vel­op­ment Bank to add his­tor­i­cal da­ta to the web­site.

“In work­ing with the IDB con­sul­tant, he has rec­om­mend­ed that we put longer time se­ries on the web­site so we are go­ing in­to our pa­per files and up­load­ing da­ta, so we can have 20-30 years of time se­ries da­ta, to en­sure it is made avail­able to the pub­lic. Part of that is con­vert­ing the da­ta so it can be down­loaded,” Blan­chard said.

He said so far, the CSO had con­vert­ed 70 per cent of it’s da­ta.

Per­ma­nent sec­re­tary for the Min­istry of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment, Joanne De­o­raj said the Min­istry was aware of the staff con­straints at the CSO.

She said the cur­rent com­ple­ment of staff was not suf­fi­cient for the work the CSO was re­quired to car­ry out.

De­o­raj said the Min­istry was hop­ing to cre­ate a new sta­tis­ti­cal body called the Na­tion­al Sta­tis­ti­cal In­sti­tute, that would be an ex­pan­sion of the CSO.

“For the kind of work the CSO needs to do, to try to get in­to the next stage of its de­vel­op­ment which we be­lieve is the Na­tion­al Sta­tis­ti­cal In­sti­tute and ex­pand the op­er­a­tions of the CSO be­cause the yeo­man work the team now is do­ing, they re­al­ly are try­ing to stretch them­selves and do all that needs to be done but they re­al­ly do need more ca­pac­i­ty,” De­o­raj said.

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