Census metadata driven data collection monitoring: The Ethiopian experience

Abstract

As mobile and wireless technologies continually improve and become more affordable, reliable, powerful and user-friendly, Computer Assisted Personal Interviewing (CAPI) is expected to become the one of the effective approaches in field-based census data collection even in those countries where access to infrastructure for information and communication technologies is limited. African countries are at such a case. The introduction of electronic data capture into the business cycle of the census provides cost and time savings, and also allows users to take advantage of added features that can be programmed into mobile devices or linked to the data collection process. These features include, among others, integrated maps and Global Positioning System (GPS) and real time monitoring of fieldwork. This paper shows how the Italian National Institute of Statistics (Istat) has supported the Ethiopia Central Statistics Agency (CSA) in designing and implementing such a monitoring system, which has been fully integrated with the census data collection process managed by CSPro, the public domain software package developed by the U.S. Census Bureau (USCB). The proposed architecture is generalised and provides a simple solution for monitoring electronic data collection operations, particularly in cases where the technical and financial resources to implement such a system from the ground up are lacking.