Census 2010 – Operations and technology Sultanate of Oman National Centre for Statistics and Information (NCSI) Muscat 1 United Nations Expert Group Meeting on Revising the Principles and Recommendations for Population and Housing Censuses New York 29 October - 1 November 2013 Yaqoob Al Zadjali Director of Social Surveys Yaqoob Al Zadjali Director of Social Surveys

Vision of the 2010 Census related to our Agenda The below are the summary of Census 2010 vision Statements Endorse the Total Quality Concept Achieve the highest level of comprehensiveness and accuracy Automate all census operations by the use of advanced Technologies Disseminate preliminary results of census one week after the conclusion of the census field work.

We had utilized the following Technologies to Smoothen census 2010 Operations to achieve the vision. Online JOB portal : used to recruit census workers. GRP (ERP) system: for Back office automation, covering Budgeting, Finance, HR, Payroll, Purchase, Inventory and transportation systems seats call center comprise of quality assurance, codification, review and call agents. Office Communication Portal: integrated with SMS and Gateway for inter office communication. PDAs: As the primary data collection medium integrated with GIS Self service portal: Who wished to fill the Census Questioner online. Web Portal and IVR system: to create awareness. IT Helpdesk : For field support

Online JOB portal to speedup the recruitment process. We had Implemented online job portal to ease the census recruitment process, and received the huge response from 14,000 job applicants with-in the short span of time, applicants filled the below details  Post applied for,  Geographical location,  Education level  Date of Birth  Experience  CV These details helped us to filer the applicants quickly and call for the interview for the selection process.

GRP system ( Government Resource Planning ) for back office automation To have harmony in the back office functions, the integration of information between any administrative processes of the census to be taken carefully, Therefore we had implemented a integrated GRP system with the below modules. Budget Module: Allocation of budget grants to various heads and sub heads. Finance module : Track the payments and book all the expenses. HR & Payroll Module: recruitments, employee benefits, salary processing.

GRP system ( Government Resource Planning ) as back office system Purchase Module: Manage the suppliers, purchase orders etc. Inventory Module: Stock management, issue of materials. Transportation Module: As huge number of vehicles used in the census operation, following process are automated to smoothen the census operation.  Vehicle legal requirements such as insurance, registration.  tracking the vehicle services and fuel card management.  Driver management.  Issue the vehicles to the census workers when requested.

100+ seat call center for better data Quality We have utilized the call center from the initial to final stage of census few usages are below, To complete the uncompleted data, correct contradicting data by the (call) quality Assurance Center. To call the head of household to reconfirm his or her wish to fill the Census Questioner using online self service portal. To Help the field workers.

E-Office communication portal for better control on operations. Eoffice is an inter-personal communication portal integrated with SMS and gateways. CEO and other managers of the census can send the memo, announcements, circulars, SMS, to all the census team members by a click of mouse. While sending the memo and circulars, there is an option to alert or notify the recipients by SMS and . This system is built using hierarchical access method, that means the recipients can be a reporting manager or sub-ordinates.

Role of the PDAs & laptops PDAs are used as a primary data collection medium by the field workers, application forms are built in a way that provide comfortable data entry and easy navigation. data entry forms are built with data validation rules and skipping rules. Field offices are equipped with Mini laptops for intermediate validations. End of the day, field workers sync the collected data with the field office laptop for further verification and clarification by field supervisor. If any data violation found by the field supervisor, the field workers are directed back to the household to clear the violations.

Self service portal We have utilized the self service portal for the persons who wished to fill online. Option to save the data and reopen again. Login screen is protected by username and password that we sent to the registered mobile as SMS. Portal supports multi browser that we have mentioned in the login page. Help text is attached with each items, mentioned clearly in 2 languages (English/Arabic) Implemented in secured, Clustered and high performance environment to avoid the denial of services.

IVR system Interactive Voice Response (I-V-R) I-V-R systems provides the public, citizens and expatriates with the required information about the 2010 census in addition to a contest related to the census with the aim of spreading of census among the public. following information are passed to public thru IVR. About census Administration, legal support, confidentiality of data, census staff, Types of Censuses, Census objectives, Census definition, census phases, preparation phase, updating phase, enumeration phase. Contest will be asked four questions and of giving three correct answers, he/she will be qualified to enter the draw to win one of the prizes. Web Portal Web portal is launched exclusively for census 2010 for public awareness.

IT Help Desk system We had implemented IT help desk system to cater the support request raised from the field. When the IT helpdesk agent receives the support call, agent may resolve it with the preset instructions given. Upon resolving the request agent would update the details of the request resolved. Request that requires technical expertise, will be transferred to the expert group thru the system itself. Helpdesk is integrated with the digital signage system to show the requests in queue, request resolved, from which governorate etc with appropriate graphs.

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