Ethiopia / EthioInfoV3.1 one-stop shop for development data launched by the central statistical agency of Ethiopia / Disaggregated Data on Orphans and Disability in Ethiopia Included for the First Time
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia, December 21, 2010/African Press Organization (APO)/ — The latest version of EthioInfo, a general purpose national monitoring database for the collation and presentation of data on human development, customized from the new Devinfo, was released by the Ethiopian Central Statistical Agency (CSA) on the occasion of World Statistics Day, 25 November 2010.
W/ro Samia Zekaria, Director General of the Central Statistical Agency (CSA) in her opening keynote address said, “We will be launching EthioInfo V3.1 developed with valuable assistance obtained from UNICEF which is the latest indictor database containing indicators obtained from various surveys.”
“Standard indicators related to the Millennium Development Goals, as well as country specific goals are at the core of the database drawn from multiple surveys,” said Roger Pearson, Senior Social Policy Expert at UNICEF Ethiopia. “The information in EthioInfo is presented in an easily accessible, ‘one-stop’ platform with tools to facilitate data retrieval, interpretation and dissemination. Beyond providing a repository of data, EthioInfo provides easy-to-use facilities for querying the database to retrieve specific data, which can then be easily transformed into tables, graphs and maps for inclusion in reports and presentation.
“The tool aims to facilitate data sharing and standardization of indicators at global, regional and country level and making statistics available to a wide audience. Unlike previous versions, the current EthioInfo harnesses the new technology for faster connection and more features allowing greater ease of access to statistical data via the web. Now there are over 25,000 indicators disaggregated by age, sex subgroup and geographical area.”
This latest version also contains the latest population and housing census, 2007, which for the first time includes data on orphans, disability and maternal mortality at regional and zonal level. It will also include data at woreda (district) level.
Eleni Kebede, Automation and Data Dissemination Expert and member of the technical team working on EthioInfo at CSA said, “we are anticipating that with the better features of the latest version and the enhanced internet connectivity a wider audience will be encouraged to connect, retrieve data and generate reports easily through the website address/url: http://www.csa.gov. et/EthioInfo3 . Furthermore, it will help users in any part of the world to get timely, accurate and reliable data via the web from one source, the CSA.”
Improvements to EthioInfo were influenced by the results and recommendations following an evaluation conducted in 2009 which showed that EthioInfo utilization was low. The tasks involved updating the system with latest surveys, strengthening the supporting IT infrastructure of CSA for faster downloading speed and migrating the system to the new Devinfo version 6.0 Technology.
“We are happy to be among the first ten out of the twenty-five CSA branch offices to have internet connection,” said Belay Aboma, statistician from the Wellega CSA branch office. “I am proud of the EthioInfo V3.1, [and] glad to have a useful tool that opens the door for all to easily access data at any time and place over the internet. Researchers no longer [need to] spend time to go to another place and queue to access the print version of the statistical data. Indeed, it is a very useful tool to any researchers in the world including our region Wellega. It also helps reduce the work load in the branch office in assisting users with required data and information.”
CSA is now working on popularizing the system to meet its ultimate objective; the utilization of this platform by policy makers, researchers, donors, development workers and civil society and wider audience to monitor the development results including the New Growth and Transformation Plan (GTP) as well as the Millennium Development Goals. This includes devising advocacy strategies such as incorporating the EthioInfo SMS- technology, pool indexing for easy global web searching, web promotion and more training for potential users to be aware of existence and capacity of EthioInfo.
“The CSA is key player in generating statistical data for monitoring and evaluation of the goals set in the Growth and Transformation Plan,” said Yakob Mudesir, National Statistical System Coordination and Operations Deputy Director General of the CSA. “For this, the CSA will be focusing on two major activities: regularly generating statistical data based on the priorities of the GTP, effort on coordination and quality assurance procedures to regularly convert data obtained from administrative records to official statistics. In this regard, the EthioInfo will be CSA’s platform to disseminate regularly updated indicators generated through the periodic and ad hoc surveys of the CSA that will assist policy makers to easily follow the progress made related to the GTP.”
SOURCE
United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF)
