The Census and Survey Processing System (CS Pro) Training was conducted for staff of Ministry of Agriculture yesterday at the Salvation Army office as part of continued efforts to enhance data collection and data keeping within the Ministry.
CS Pro is a software package developed by the US Bureau of Census for entry, editing, tabulation and dissemination of Census and Survey Data.
The Census and Survey Data processed on the same software and platform ensures great compatibility between data sources where data could be easily shared, extracted and accessed between organisation and Data users.
Opening the training, Acting Permanent Secretary for Agriculture, Uraia Waibuta said this is an opportune time for learning as the Ministry beginning with the Statistics team will be using the CSO program.
Mr.Toga Raikoti (green bula shirt) from SPC Stats and participants from FSM, (blue top is Agriculture Staff). Photo: SUPPLIED.
“I want to show the level of commitment from the Ministry on this level of exercise, it is so important for us, we know where we are, where we were and we know some of the weaknesses in regards to data in the Ministry of Agriculture. This particular training is part of the Ministry’s intention of achieving its long term goals on data collation and updating. We know how rich in data agriculture is and we have a lot of data scattered in province, districts and the most in Divisions that is not stored and shared well. This workshop will surely build staff capacity for data processing to ensure good quality data is captured and disseminated as well as to assist in proper planning for the Ministry’s Public Sector Investor Programmes (PSIP),” Mr Waibuta said.
He said the Ministry looks forward to using this software package as it will not only collect data for the number of farmers, number of crop planted or livestock in Fiji but it will also be a means to quickly search information on the number of equipment the Ministry has, the number of vehicles and even finding relevant information on staff performance.
Mr Waibuta acknowledged the efforts by the Secretariat of the Pacific Community and the European Union through the Pacific Agriculture Policy Program (PAPP) for providing support for this training. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has also been an ardent supporter of improving statistics within the Ministry.
Apart from representatives from various divisions of the Ministry of Agriculture, two staff from the Ministry of Rural ad Maritime Development and two Statistics staff from the Federated States of Micronesia also participated in the training.
The training would be conducted for the next two weeks and is being facilitated by resource personnel from SPC Mr Toga Raikoti.
DEPTFO