Maru advises NSO to carry out census update

PLANNING and Monitoring Minister Richard Maru has advised the National Statistical Office (NSO) to carry out a census to update data for national elections, national accounts and to create a management information system.
Maru told NSO officers on Friday that the lack of updated data was the biggest problem in the country which the office had been tasked to fix.
He will submit to the National Executive Council (NEC) an analysis on the NSO’s failure to provide an updated census data during the recent general election.
“I want to ask the office to make sure that I get the NEC submission this coming week on your analysis on why we failed last time and how you propose to get it right,” Maru said.
“We also need the national accounts to be updated and released on time.
“I want a paper to tell the NEC that we did not do the calculation before.
“We’ve started the process. We are catching up and in 24 months’ time, we will complete the update.
“I want to know the time frame and what we need to do as a government to help you.”
National Statistician Roko Koloma said they were working with the Australian Bureau of Statistics to build capacity and capability to improve data collection.
He said they must put resources into important surveys to align with their 10-year strategy.
The survey exercise will recruit village-based officers because of their local knowledge.