BENGALURU: The Union government will soon begin the process of setting up a data warehouse, a central organisation, to make all sorts of data, reports and statistics collected by the Centre and the states, available in the public domain.
The creation of this warehouse, which will be cloud based, was discussed at length during the 25th conference of the Central and State Statistical Organisations (COCSSO), which concluded in the city on Friday.
Addressing reporters later, Pravin Srivastava, Additional Director General, Central Statistics Office (CSO), said the process of bidding for the creation of the warehouse is yet to start and it is in the drawing-board stage currently. “The data warehouse, once implemented, will reduce the lags in the collection and dissemination of data. The government will soon call for bids for the creation of the warehouse,” he said.
Chief Statistician T C A Ananth said the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) is also working towards generating local-level data and many states have made progress in this matter.
“A lot of presentations were made at the conference by states which are looking at granular data at the panchayat level. Some statistics like GDP are calculated at higher levels but we are working on methods in which these can also be measured at lower levels of geography. Building local-level statistics is a work in progress,” he said.
Commenting on the challenges faced by the government in data collection and analysis, Ananth said capacity building has become essential due to a shortage of qualified technical personnel. “In Goa, for example, there are no statistical programmes available for students. The other challenge is from the private sector. People who can work on statistics for the government can do it for the private sector as well. The challenge is to get them working for us. We have started internships for students to get them interested. The fact is we must be an attractive option,” he said.
The conference also saw discussions on calculation of state/district domestic product, base year revision of Gross Domestic Product and Index of Industrial production, sub-state level Consumer Price Index and state participation in national sample surveys.