Shaji Ahmed • almost 10 years ago
Proposal: Census data collection
Today's Dawn: Census impossible without army personnel, SC told. The report goes on to claim that "The population census... involves mobilization of around 200,000 people, including 167,000 enumerators,... an exercise that will incur an expenditure of Rs 14.5 billion."
I for one believe that we can do better that that. One Android app for self-updates; mobile retailers and franchises could use it to update data of other people for a minimal charge, and we're done. Broadcast notices via SMS, do it every year.
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3 comments
Saad Omer • almost 10 years ago
The huge deployment of biometric machines done by telecom operators in the context of SIMs verification couple of years back, is still in place. This infrastructure, alongwith NADRA's records, can give at least a basic (although very rough/low) census of population, alongside a number of population variables (age, location, gender), etc. This will significantly reduce the scope of the project, thereby involving lesser resources, energies and cost.
Shaji Ahmed • almost 10 years ago
These are the forms used in the last census in 1998. I don't know if this is the complete set, but the short form (http://unstats.un.org/unsd/demographic/sources/census/quest/PAK1998enS.pdf) is used for building the roster, while the long form (http://unstats.un.org/unsd/demographic/sources/census/quest/PAK1998enL.pdf) is used to record answers against every household member.
There are about 15 household-level questions, and 48 individual-level questions. NADRA covers about 15-20 of them. The rest is what makes the census important. Questions on industry and occupation, disabilities, literacy and education, families and sizes, migrations, they are critical in determining local policies. Just the demographics alone are a treasure trove for data miners and policy makers.
But yes, the whole idea is to reduce the upfront and logistical costs of a census by distributing the entry and processing over a longer (hopefully continuous) period that does not involve deploying the military inside our own country just for data entry.
Saad Omer • almost 10 years ago
Government is pinning down people by inserting CNIC/biometric verification at a lot of places (SIMs, banks, credit cards, sale/purchase of property, driving license, etc). Its a very tight circle, which at least an on-job person cannot really escape/cheat with false information. The missing info can be gathered from this source (not all of it, but some part of it). It might be a good starting point.