چكيده لاتين :
Statistical information is essential for effective development planning, policy formulation, action programmed and monitoring of the progress made. It is fundamental to a democratic society for informed decision making by its institutions as well as individuals. Historically, statistics were gathered by the state for administrative and planning purposes. In fact, population data are the oldest among the statistics collected by the state as they provided the number, ethnic and other composition, and geographic distribution of the people. Some sort of record-keeping concerning people existed quite some time ago, for example in 668 AD in the United Sila Kingdom of Korea. In the ESCAP region most of the government census and statistics organizations were established in the twentieth century, while in some cases they had already been constituted towards the end of the nineteenth century.
Until the formal collection of statistical information for research began in the modern times, the collection, dissemination and use of data largely remained with the government departments. Now the national statistical offices in a democratic society strive to assist the process of decision-making, research and discussion not only within the government but also in the community. It is well recognized that, the general public, the civil society and the private sector should have easy and equal access to basic official statistics. Soon after statistics began to be perceived as public good, the demand for quantitative information rose. With limited resources at hand and multiplying demand for statistical information, NSOs introduced procedures for prioritizing their data collection through such institutions as data user committees for determining the topics to be collected in population and housing censuses and surveys. In some countries this process has become an extensive dialogue between the NSO and the community. Effective interaction between the data producers and data users is now considered an important element and a major aim of modern national statistical services.
Focusing on the area of population statistics, this paper emphasizes the need for paying greater attention to the utilization of data. It argues that a great amount of data produced by the national statistical agencies remains grossly underutilized while the demand for new data has been multiplying at a fast rate in this era of information revolution. Therefore, concerted efforts are required by all concerned to promote the effective exploitation and fuller utilization of data. That will also help rationalize the production of additional data.
