‫الجمهورية الجزائرية الديمقراطية الشعبية‬
Ministère des Finances
“Census Data Management using Tablets for the 2018 Algerian Census”
DR. TARIK BOUREZGUE
DIRECTOR, OFFICE FOR NATIONAL STATISTICS, ALGERIA
ADDIS ABBEBA, OCTOBER 2015
PRESENTATION OUTLINE

I- ALGERIAN STATISTICAL SYSTEM

II- STATISTICS PROCESS and STATISTICAL SYSTEM

III- ICT USE: CURRENT STATUS

IV- ICT USE: THE WAY FORWARD

V- CENSUS ALGERIA 2018: USE OF ICT

CONCLUSION
I- ALGERIAN STATISTICAL SYSTEM
HISTORY
 1962: Creation of a Planning Institution with a Statistics Department.
 September 1962: Establishment of COCOES: coordination, control and statistical
confidentiality.
 1964: Creation of the National Committee in charge of First Population Census.
 1971: Creation of the Commission for Census and Survey Statistics (CNRES).
 Mai 1971: Decree on Regulations, Coordination and Statistical obligations.
 1982: Creation of The Office for National Statistics ( ONS).
 1982: Dissolution of CNRES and transfer of its structures, resources and activities to
ONS.
 1994: Algerian Statistical Law (Legislative decree N°94-01, January 15th, 1994).
 1995: ONS statutes reorganization (Executive decree N°95-159, June 3rd, 1995).
I- ALGERIAN STATISTICAL SYSTEM
ALGERIAN STATISTICAL LAW
GENERAL PRINCIPLES
ORGANIZATION OF THE STATISTICAL SYSTEM
STATISTICS CONFIDENTIALITY
STATISTICS DISSEMINATION
I- ALGERIAN STATISTICAL SYSTEM
ALGERIAN STATISTICAL LAW
GENERAL PRINCIPLES
Faculty for everyone to produce, process, analyze and
disseminate statistical Information.
Compliance with methodological and ethical standards of
statistical practices.
Coordination and standardization statistics.
Any statistical information prepared by state services or have
benefited from Statistics Registration is in the public domain.
I- ALGERIAN STATISTICAL SYSTEM
ALGERIAN STATISTICAL LAW
- ORGANIZATION
OF THE STATISTICAL SYSTEM
 BODIES COORDINATION AND PRODUCTION
The National Statistics Council (CNS)
The Central Institution of Statistics (ONS)
Private and Public Bodies of Statistics
 INSTRUMENTS AND STANDARD PROCEDURES
The Statistics Identification Number (NIS)
Statistics Registration (for Statistics Surveys)
The National Statistics Program
Codes and Classifications
I- ALGERIAN STATISTICAL SYSTEM
ALGERIAN STATISTICAL LAW
- STATISTICAL
CONFIDENTIALITY
Protection of individual information.
Staff sworn to Professional Secrecy.
The
National
Statistical
Council
may
propose
the
classification of certain information as sensitive after review
of reasons and referral of an institution.
I- ALGERIAN STATISTICAL SYSTEM
ALGERIAN STATISTICAL LAW
- STATISTICAL
DISSEMINATION
 Any publication of statistical data must be accompanied by
elements necessary for an assessment of their validity and
reliability.
The publication of statistical data from non-registered surveys
must be marked “Data from non-registered survey”.
 Any statistical publication derived from registered surveys
should be recorded subject to Legal Deposit.
II- STATISTICS PROCESS and STATISTICAL SYSTEM
Surveys + Administrative Sources
SNIS
Structural statistics operations:
The General Census of Population and Housing
Labor Survey
Income and Consumption Survey
Economic Census
The General Census of Agriculture
The Municipal Survey
SNIS: National Statistical information System
III- ICT USE: CURRENT STATUS
2011 :
- Use of the optical scanning technology for the
exploitation of Economic Census questionnaires.
- Use of CAPI in interviews of behavior of household
consumption national survey.
Since 2014 : Testing of use of PDA in CPI data collection.
Since 2012 : Switching over of all publications to the
website in order to move progressively towards a paperless
environment.
IV- ICT USE: THE WAY FORWARD
2015- 2019:
Constitution of Institutional Memory Project through the
use of digitization technologies.
African Information Highway Project
through the
establishment of a Data Portal in collaboration with the
African Bank for Development.
RGPH (Population and Housing Census) 2018: use of ICT
in mapping supervision and PDA in data collection.
IV- DIGITAL SPACE: THE WAY FORWARD
V- CENSUS ALGERIA 2018: USE OF ICT
For RGPH 2018:
-50,000 agents will be recruited and trained as
enumerators ;
-13,000 agents will be recruited and trained as controllers;
-The municipal delegates .
V- CENSUS ALGERIA 2018: USE OF ICT
The enumerator
Each enumerator will be equipped with a tablet for data
entry and a paper district notebook that is provided by the
municipal delegate.
V- CENSUS ALGERIA 2018: USE OF ICT
The controller
Each controller is also equipped with a Notebook tablet
(for an overall vision of the questionnaire) to:
-verify the quality of work of the five enumerators, under
his supervision,
-have a status of the collection in the field and daily
statistics on households surveyed and enumerator
performance.
V- CENSUS ALGERIA 2018: USE OF ICT
Authentication of enumerators and controllers:
-Login lists (username and password) will be defined
following the use of mobile chips’ PINs affected by the
mobile operator.
-The login could be defined as the concatenation of the
wilaya, municipality and district codes (given at the
conclusion of cartographic updates).
V- CENSUS ALGERIA 2018: USE OF ICT
Procedure for the enumerator:
i. The enumerator connects to the census application via a 3G chip connected to the
regional server, and this, through the login assigned by the mobile operator.
ii. The enumerator should have the opportunity to fill in a new questionnaire, as well
as to correct a questionnaire that has not been validated by his controller. (Only the
enumerator has the ability to modify the questionnaire.)
Household questionnaires are filled in a chronological order of questions and
consistency checks.
iii. The filled in questionnaire will be automatically put on a validation wait state.
At the end of the interview, the enumerator performs a transfer operation as follows:
i. A direct transfer to the secure database located at the regional data center, where
3G coverage is available.
ii. In case of absence of mobile connection, an encrypted asynchronous backup is
made to a SD card located at the tablet level (in a transfer queue state). Once
connected, data is transferred automatically.
iii. If the interview is not completed for force majeure reasons, the partial backup is
saved directly onto the database.
V- CENSUS ALGERIA 2018: USE OF ICT
Procedure for the controller:
i.
-
The controller in turn connects via his login on the server in its region, through
the supervision and monitoring application:
He consults and verifies questionnaires awaiting validation in order to spot
anomalies found on the basis of data that was collected from the questionnaire.
A correct questionnaire moves to a validated state, otherwise it will be on
update waiting status by the enumerator (back to household).
ii. The controller also accesses the supervision and monitoring application to
assess the progress of data collection of its enumerators in the field, their yields and
the share of absent households, etc.
V- CENSUS ALGERIA 2018: USE OF ICT
Flow of Information Chart
V- CENSUS ALGERIA 2018: USE OF ICT
Technical requirements
A relational database management system such as SQL Server is
needed to administer and manage the RGPH database to guarantee
quality, continuity and confidentiality of information.
A global database at the central site to store and retrieve real-time data
entirety.
An implementation of database levels at regional collection sites.
Software installed at regional levels for supervision, control and
monitoring of the implementation on the field.
Entry applications for entering data collected on tablets as well as the
transcript of paper questionnaires. (As per international recommendations, 10% of the
questionnaires will be on paper as to take charge of the specific cases on the field.)
Establishment of specialized interconnection links between the central
site (headquarters) and various regional sites.
V- CENSUS ALGERIA 2018: USE OF ICT
V- CENSUS ALGERIA 2018: USE OF ICT
Information flow estimates
50 000 enumerators spread over the
four regional annexes:
- 17 819 enumerators for the central
region.
- 12 437 enumerators for the
western region.
- 16 749 enumerators for the eastern
region.
2 995 enumerators for the southern
region.
150 questionnaires per enumerator
during the period of execution
(average of 10 daily).
50 Ko per questionnaire and 15 days
of census data collection on the
field.
- 890 950 Ko total for the central
region.
- 621 850 Ko total for the western
region.
- 837 450 Ko total for the eastern
region.
- 149 750 Ko total for the southern
region.
V- CENSUS ALGERIA 2018: USE OF ICT
Challenges
Consideration should be given to how and where the data are held on
devices.
Storage and Transport.
Concerns about tablet screen brightness and breaking.
Concerns about battery autonomy of tablets: (at least six hour
autonomous and battery boosters for tablets.)
Selection and training of enumerators and controllers.
Maintaining data security.
Immediate feedback on data quality.
Adequate preparation: (Sufficient time must be allocated to designing
and pretesting of the electronic questionnaire and to overall testing and
debugging of the software, particularly for questionnaires in multiple
languages and in a non-Latin script, as it is the case for Arabic in Algeria.).
V- CENSUS ALGERIA 2018: USE OF ICT
Perspectives
We will be looking into:
Implementing ICT into our surveys (household and business) as an
integral part of our testing of the mobile census solution.
Looking into Cloud Computing, software as a service, platform as a
service, and infrastructure as a service, as a possibility.
Explore the possibilities and the challenges to, post census, implement a
population register and explore the option of internet based
surveys/census.
CONCLUSION
New technology is not a magic potion, but it can help ONS achieve its
mission more efficiently and effectively.
“…In an uncharted world of boundless data, information designers are our
new navigators. They are computer scientists, statisticians, graphic designers,
producers and cartographers who map entire oceans of data and turn them
into innovative visual displays, like rich graphs and charts, that help both
companies and consumers cut through the clutter. These gurus of visual
analytics are making interactive data synonymous with attractive data”.
Source: The NY Times, “When the data struts its stuff”, April 2011.
Questions, comments or suggestions
bourezgue@ons.dz;
or
ons@ons.dz / stat@ons.dz .
IN LOOKING FORWARD
TO SEEING YOU ON OUR
WEBSITE,
www.ons.dz ,
THANKS!