The National Statistical Office (NSO) under the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) has modernised official statistics by expanding digital survey tools, integrating administrative records, and strengthening quality and metadata systems. The change matters because official statistics are the base for planning, welfare targeting, and economic policymaking.

What changed

The NSO has adopted Computer Assisted Personal Interviewing (CAPI) for survey data collection using handheld devices with built-in validation checks. Survey operations are now supported by centralized servers, real-time monitoring dashboards, GPS tagging of surveyed households, and secure electronic transmission of data.

The release states that several stages of survey work have been automated, including sample selection, field monitoring, survey administration, validation, and data processing. The intended outcome is better data quality, quicker processing, and faster dissemination of survey results.

Use of administrative records

MoSPI is increasingly using administrative datasets together with sample surveys to build sampling frames and select survey samples. The release gives the following examples:

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