On 29 August 2010 20:39, David Kiania | Asentric Consulting Ltd < kianiadee@gmail.com> wrote:
Touche Rad! that's the main question behind this post. This information means different things to different people in different industries.It's imperative to start thinking about useful applications we can derive and open a communications channel with the bureau of statistics, the heavy lifting has been done.
It would be fantastic and indeed it needs to be the norm that this sort of data is released to the public. However, and it is a BIG however, it would be necessary to remove any information that can identify a specific individual to a specific location. The reason for this are numerous. A census is meant to be an accurate reflection of the population surveyed. If you make it possible to work out who lives where from the shared data then the motivation to avoid taking part or just lying to the enumerator next time round would be huge. For example, an Ethiopian family or Sudanese family living in Ngumo would be very reluctant to tell the enumerator their country of origin if they know that data could be used by immigration/police to track them down. In the same way, ethnic "foreigners" who live in a different part of the country from their "traditional" home lands would be equally. Imagine if you could theoretically compile a list of all the Kenyan Somali's in Kakamega AND match that to their exact locations. On the other hand it would be fascinating to find out which Nairobi estate claimed to have the most boat/canoe owners! -- Pamoja e:daudi.were@gmail.com <e%3Adaudi.were@gmail.com> skype: d.were