Min­is­ter of Plan­ning and the Econ­o­my Dr Bhoen­dratt Tewarie has wise­ly com­mit­ted to a project to mod­ernise the op­er­a­tions of the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice (CSO). From to­day, Sta­tis­tics Swe­den, the na­tion­al or­gan­i­sa­tion re­spon­si­ble for gath­er­ing, pro­cess­ing and dis­trib­ut­ing the sta­tis­ti­cal date of that North­ern Eu­ro­pean na­tion will be­gin work on im­prov­ing the op­er­a­tions of the CSO.

The agency's work is im­pres­sive, and a sig­nif­i­cant range of up-to-date da­ta about Swe­den is read­i­ly avail­able on their web­site, rep­re­sent­ing not just a range of in­for­ma­tion gath­ered about the coun­try, but an at­trac­tive and in­ter­est­ing pre­sen­ta­tion of trends in the econ­o­my and lifestyles of nine mil­lion Swedes.

In con­trast, the da­ta avail­able on the CSO web­site seems al­most his­tor­i­cal and the agency has not stream­lined its op­er­a­tions to act as a source of da­ta com­men­su­rate with its role in the 21st cen­tu­ry. The dis­sem­i­na­tion of da­ta has been left to oth­er agen­cies, such as the Cen­tral Bank, which makes the most com­mon­ly known use of the CSO's fi­nan­cial in­di­ca­tors.

Much of the da­ta cur­rent­ly post­ed to the CSO web­site is al­so quite old, re­flect­ing ei­ther in­ad­e­quate gath­er­ing of in­for­ma­tion, slug­gish­ness in pro­cess­ing it, or a lack of com­mit­ment to mak­ing such da­ta pub­licly avail­able. It's most like­ly that the cur­rent state of pub­lic da­ta dis­tri­b­u­tion re­sults from a blend of all three fac­tors, none of which is ap­pro­pri­ate to a da­ta-fo­cused era in which de­ci­sions should be based on for­mal sta­tis­ti­cal in­for­ma­tion that tracks the rel­e­vant ar­eas of Trinidad and To­ba­go's de­vel­op­ment.

An­oth­er trou­bling an­gle on the is­sues that Swedish Sta­tis­tics will face in their project to "clean up" the CSO was Dr Tewarie's state­ment to the Sen­ate last week that there was po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence by the PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion in the op­er­a­tions of the CSO. This is a strong ac­cu­sa­tion that sug­gests that da­ta, or at the very least in­for­ma­tion in­ter­pre­ta­tions, might have been coloured by po­lit­i­cal im­per­a­tives.

The fail­ings of the CSO as an agency of fact gath­er­ing in a mod­ern, fast-paced Trinidad and To­ba­go are con­sid­er­able enough that such ac­cu­sa­tions aren't need­ed to dri­ve home the need to bring a more pro­fes­sion­al per­spec­tive to the CSO's op­er­a­tions.

Un­less there is tan­gi­ble ev­i­dence to back up such in­flam­ma­to­ry as­ser­tions, the na­tion would be bet­ter ser­viced by the Plan­ning Min­is­ter bring­ing all his en­er­gies to bear on the con­sid­er­able chal­lenges that face the mod­erni­sa­tion project at the CSO.

The Sta­tis­tics Swe­den project is part of the Pub­lic Sec­tor Re­form Ini­ti­a­tion Pro­gramme and is be­ing ex­e­cut­ed by the Min­istry of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion us­ing IADB fund­ing. The Min­istry of Plan­ning and Econ­o­my is the man­ag­ing agency for the trans­for­ma­tion pro­gramme, tasked with study­ing the sup­ply and de­mand of sta­tis­ti­cal in­for­ma­tion, iden­ti­fy­ing the core prod­ucts of the CSO, de­vel­op­ing an in­for­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy mas­ter plan and sup­ply­ing man­age­r­i­al and tech­ni­cal ex­per­tise to dri­ve the re­or­gan­i­sa­tion of the lo­cal sta­tis­tics agency.

It's clear that the CSO has been do­ing its best with the sys­tems and re­sources that it's cur­rent­ly work­ing with, but the in­ad­e­qua­cy of these process­es is be­com­ing more ob­vi­ous. The cen­sus of 2011, on which field work was com­plet­ed on May 31, would have tak­en a year to pro­duce-if it is re­leased on its cur­rent dead­line of June 2012.

The cen­sus, the first since the year 2000, put thou­sands of per­son­nel in the field. The large scale de­mand on re­sources led to the late de­liv­ery of oth­er sta­tis­tics nor­mal­ly record­ed dur­ing that time. Ac­cord­ing to Dr Tewarie, there will be a grow­ing need for de­mog­ra­phers, sta­tis­ti­cians and econo­me­tri­cians in the CSO and the gov­ern­ment should seek to de­vel­op lo­cal tal­ent in the ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem as well as pro­fes­sion­al among the di­as­po­ra to sup­port the planned mod­erni­sa­tion of this crit­i­cal da­ta col­lec­tion agency.