Copyright 2010, The World Bank Group. All Rights Reserved. ICT - a core management issue Part 1 Managing ICT resources Produced in Collaboration between World Bank Institute and the Development Data Group (DECDG)

Copyright 2010, The World Bank Group. All Rights Reserved. Impacts of ICT ICT developments are dynamic NSOs have been particularly affected Five key developments: 1.Powerful, relatively inexpensive computer equipment is available to most staff members in many statistical offices 2.User-friendly applications software gives control over a number of key statistical functions 3.Readily available off-the-shelf components have made in- house application programming easier 4.Computer networking facilitates internal access to data and metadata 5.Information technology gives access to external sources of information 2

Copyright 2010, The World Bank Group. All Rights Reserved. Models of ICT management There are two broad models of managing ICT in NSOs 1.Model 1 is based on strict standardization and centralization of decision-making 2.Model 2 is more loosely structured In practice, most models are a hybrid of models 1 and 2 3

Copyright 2010, The World Bank Group. All Rights Reserved. Model 1 vs. Model 2 Both model 1 and model 2 have advantages Under a strict model 1 regime, personal software and data import and export on individual machines are prohibited This has security advantages with respect to both viruses and confidential data Under both models, hardware procurement is probably centralized The general understanding today is that software applications should be developed as closely as possible to the substantive user This can be achieved under both models 4

Copyright 2010, The World Bank Group. All Rights Reserved. Old and new concerns In the mainframe period recommendations were: Human IT resources are scarce and must be kept under central supervision Document all systems extensively Organize the workforce balancing functional IT and subject matter experience Modern recommendations include: Do in principle not subcontract IT development work, other than certain one-time applications, to outside agencies Do not assign IT staff to new projects until they have completed clear documentation of data and programs for ongoing projects Do not leave administration of hardware to other parties unless it is guaranteed that statistical processing will get the highest priority. 5

Copyright 2010, The World Bank Group. All Rights Reserved. Use of ICT in statistics Modern NSOs use ICT throughout all operations: Data capture Data processing Data analysis Data tabulation Data dissemination Key issues include: Using standard products or custom-made software How and when to develop custom-made software 6

Copyright 2010, The World Bank Group. All Rights Reserved. Statistics production model Production model is a cornerstone for ICT policy Model consists of statistical registers input data (microdata) Data aggregated from input data are stored in an output database with very detailed aggregations Output database is available to all staff for tabulations and answering inquiries Publication database is a more aggregated version of the output database and is accessible for the public through the NSO website A common metadata base supports the entire database system 7

Copyright 2010, The World Bank Group. All Rights Reserved. ICT for data capture Data capture can be ‘manual’ or computer-assisted Another option is collecting data from registers In addition to traditional paper methods, many NSOs focus on electronic data collection Free or cheap software for entering, editing, and tabulating of survey data includes CSPro and Blaise CSPro is available from the United States Census Bureau Blaise can be obtained from Statistics Netherlands Both packages are used worldwide 8

Copyright 2010, The World Bank Group. All Rights Reserved. ICT for data processing Spreadsheets are only useful for very simple processing Blaise and CSPro software can handle more complex projects Blaise data entry program can store data in Oracle or SQL server databases Blaise/Manipula application can be used for auto-coding, checking plausibility and validity or to clean data Blaise can generate a log file with time measurements to track down what happened during an interview 9

Copyright 2010, The World Bank Group. All Rights Reserved. ICT for analysis CSPro and Blaise also offer analysis tools Comprehensive commercial software for statistical analysis includes SPSS and SAS SAS has more functionalities than SPSS, but is also more expensive For most NSOs SPSS is powerful enough 10