Population and Housing Census of the Kyrgyz Republic 2020 to be held in electronic format using mobile application for data collection and processing

Publications: 21.11.2019

In February 2019, the President of the Kyrgyz Republic mentioned about the need of conducting the upcoming Population and Housing Census using modern technologies, which fits in the framework of digitalization of the country, the transition to electronic format.

In order to accomplish this task, the National Statistical Committee used a software based on the Survey Solutions application developed by the World Bank to convert paper questionnaires into electronic format.

For the first time, the mobile application was tested off-line by 30 specialists of the National Statistical Committee during the pilot Population and Housing Census in Tokmok and Chui regions, Chui oblast. In July 2019, after completing the mobile application, 33 specialists of the National Statistical Committee additionally tested the application in the territory of Kum-Bel aiyl aimak, Issyk-Kul region, Issyk-Kul oblast.

The results of testing the mobile application showed a number of advantages over the paper-based questionnaires:

- cost saving and reduction of data processing time;

- improved data quality: automatic routing and editing;

- possibility to track census progress in real time;

- more efficient management of census field workers.

For security purposes and protection of personal data, the application is not  available in the public domain. The application for scribes will be installed from the National Statistical Committee server on their personal phone or tablet, based on Android 5.0 and above. Each scribe will have his or her own login and password to access the mobile application which will be in two languages: state and official languages.