Griffith Feeney
Aloha and welcome to Workshop 2 of the 27th Summer Seminar on Population, Planning Utilization of the 2000 Round Census Results! It is a pleasure to have you all here and I look forward to working with you over the next four weeks.
Objective This workshop will help you and the people you work with make the most of the 2000 round census data for your country. You will learn to take advantage of emerging information technology, including the Internet, organizational intranets, and geographic information systems (GIS), to disseminate census data and communicate census results to program managers, policy makers, and other audiences.
Background The 2000 round of population censuses will be the largest social data collection effort in history. Millions of enumerators will visit the great majority of the world's households to collect detailed information on demography, health, education, economic situation, and related topics. This information will be used to address a wide range of social issues, from poverty alleviation to provision of health services, from regional economic development to evaluation of family planning programs. It will guide the decision-making of governments, international agencies, nongovernmental organizations, and businesses through the first decade of the 21st century.
The power of population census data lies in their universal coverage. Because a census is a complete enumeration of the national population, it can provide information not just for the nation or for large national subdivisions, but for every subnational aggregate. The potential volume of information is far greater than the capacity of traditional methods of data analysis.
Recent developments in information technology have tremendously increased the capability to make census data address social information needs. These developments make it feasible to provide, in digital form, census data far more detailed than has been possible in the past.
These same developments have changed the cost structure of data dissemination and have increased the ability of policy agencies and other audiences to use census data in digital form. Exploiting these new developments requires planning well in advance of the census enumeration and an understanding of the new technologies.
Coordinator Now let me introduce myself. I majored in mathematics at university. I started in physics but transferred to mathematics because I didn't like the way physicists did mathematics. I was interested in social science from early on but didn't take to any of the major social science disciplines.
My alma mater, Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, had a “work-study” program, and in the Fall of 1964 I worked for three months as a “Statistical Clerk” at the University of Michigan Population Studies Center. In the library there I discovered Nathan Keyfitz's book on mathematical demography in draft form and realized at once that this was my kind of social science.
In 1972 I completed my doctorate in Demography at the University of California at Berkeley (Department of Demography) and came to the East-West Center, where I have been ever since. You can learn more about my work by looking at my web pages at www.gfeeney.com
My stock in trade has been inventing and improving techniques of demographic analysis and have extensive experience in analyzing census and other demographic data in many Asian countries. I've worked as visitor and consultant in many national statistical offices in the region and have been often coordinated the Program on Population's Population Census Conference.
Resource Persons We are privileged to have two highly expert resource persons for this workshop. Uwe Deichmann will be with us for the second and third weeks of the workshop. Sam Suharto will be with us during the third week of the workshop.
Dr. Deichmann is an expert on Geographical Information Systems (GIS) with extensive practical experience with population census data, including work on the Global Demography Project at the National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis (NCGIA) in Santa Barbara, California. He has also worked on population and environment issues for the United Nations Environment Program in Nairobi, Kenya.
Dr. Suharto was in charge of the 1980 census of Indonesia and was Director of the Data Processing Center of the Central Bureau of Statistics of Indonesia. He has worked for the United Nations Statistical Division since 1981 and is responsible for the United Nations 2000 Population and Housing Census Programme. He will introduce this programme to the workshop in a series of morning presentations and will make his extensive experience and expertise available during afternoon sessions.
Participants The most important people here, of course, are you, the participants, and at this point I would like to have you introduce yourselves and say a bit about you work.
Structure of the Workshop The workshop consists of two basic components. The first is a series of presentations by the coordinator and resource persons, with follow-up exercises to develop your understanding of the material presented. The schedule of presentations and exercises is indicated in the syllabus. Many of the presentations and exercises are on line already, and more will be added as the workshop progresses. The syllabus for the first and last weeks of the workshop was finalized before the beginning of the workshop. Details for the second and third weeks will be added as the workshop proceeds.
The second component of the workshop is a scenario planning exercise in which you will develop a project for using of the 2000 round census data. It is assumed that, unlike many students in a traditional university setting, whose main task is simply to learn, you have work to do after the workshop is ended and that the reason you are here is to learn things that will help you do this work more effectively. The coordinator, the resource persons, and your fellow participants can teach you many things. In the end, however, it is up to you to decide how you will use the knowledge you gain here to realize the greatest possible value from the 2000 round population censuses. Creating a “real world” project during the workshop will force you to confront this issue while you are still here and can get help from the coordinator, resource persons, and other participants.
This is not a project that I or the resource persons will assign to you. It is a project that you are responsible for conceiving, planning, and carrying out—and the conception and planning are as important a part of the exercise as the execution. The coordinator and resource persons are here are available for consultation, but the initiative should come from you. You should be thinking about your project from today. Review the syllabus in relation to your work, look ahead if you wish at the materials available on line, and think how you might use this material in your work.
You may develop a project by yourself or in cooperation with other workshop participants. For a group project you will need to identify one or more other participants with similar interests and agree on a plan. On Friday of the first and second weeks of the workshop we will meet to discuss your ideas for projects. Your project plan should be finalized by late Friday afternoon of the second week to give you time to complete the project before the workshop ends. You will each be responsible for presenting a report on your project to the workshop during the last week of the seminar. In the case of group projects, not all members need present, but all are responsible for the presentation.
Content of the Workshop The detailed content of the workshop is spelled out in the syllabus and in the various presentations, exercises and resources linked to it. Here it is worth pointing out that the presentations and exercises deal with four broad areas, Participant Responsibilities Most fundamentally, you are responsible for making the most of the opportunity provided by the workshop to extend your ability to contribute as a professional to the work of your organization and as a citizen to the welfare of your society. Because of the heterogeneity of any group of working professionals such as yourselves with respect to background, talents, and job situation, it is impossible to structure a single workshop curriculum that every participant should pursue down to the last detail. The aim of the workshop is to present a wide variety of potentially relevant presentations and exercises and have you pursue what is most pertinent to your situation.
You are responsible for learning from and teaching your fellow participants. By all means work together in doing the exercises insofar as this facilitates your learning. Many of you will have some specific knowledge or expertise that many other participants lack. Share your knowledge by assisting others, individually, in small groups, or by organizing a presentation of your own during the afternoon sessions. Work together with other participants to organize such presentations whenever you think they facilitate learning. Sharing you knowledge and expertise in this was will be a valuable learning experience for you as well as for your fellow participants.
You are jointly responsible with your fellow participants for developing and presenting a report on this workshop for presentation to all Summer Seminar participants during the last week of the Seminar. See the workshop syllabus for timing. I will work with you to help you prepare this report.
Beyond this, your responsibilities are fairly obvious. You should attend the workshop sessions, be punctual, read all daily exercises and pursue the ones that make sense for you, do a good job on your project, take proper care of and return materials borrowed from the East-West Center Resource Materials Collection, and volunteer on occasion to help out with workshop tasks.
A bit of concluding advice: “Don't be overwhelmed by the tasks before you. Don't try to do everything. Just do something!
Workshop Schedule From Monday June 1 Workshop 2 will meet from 9:00-12:00 mornings and 1:30-4:30 afternoons Monday through Friday. Mornings will be devoted primarily to presentations, guided practice, and group discussion. Afternoons will be devoted mainly to exercises and individual discussions. There will be a mid-morning break from 10:15-10:45AM. The workshop room will be open from 7:45AM to 4:30PM. Exceptions to this schedule will be announced from time to time. Extended workshop room hours will be arranged on request.
Presentations and Exercises Most presentations and presentation materials in the workshop will be provided “on-line” from a server running on the desktop computer in the coordinator's office. You will be provided with copies of all workshop computer files at the end of the workshop. You may use the printers in the workshop room to make paper copies of any materials you wish. Notebooks and notebook dividers will be provided for you to organize and store these materials.
Daily Secretary It will be useful for all workshop participants to have a single Workshop Reference Notebook containing printed copies of all workshop material, organized day by day with notebook dividers. Each day one of you will volunteer to be Secretary for the day, in which capacity you will print out workshop materials and place them in the Reference Notebook. Since we have 8 participants (at this writing) and 19 days to be covered (starting today and ending Wednesday June 24), each of you will serve as daily secretary twice, and a few of you three times.
Security of Personal Effects and Workshop Equipment Please do not leave valuables unattended in the workshop room. Burns Hall is open to the public, and while it does not happen often, there have been incidents of theft. For the security of workshop equipment it is important that the workshop room not be left open and unoccupied more than briefly. Should you notice that this is occurring, please notify the coordinator.
<gfeeney@gfeeney.com>
