GSS to automate, streamline data for analytics and modern use - Government Statistician

To streamline the several data sources in the country and automate data for analytical purposes in line with modern data users demand, Ghana Statistical Services (GSS) has introduced the ‘Data Science Roadmap’.

According to GSS, the data science roadmap has the potential to improve and automate the production of currently released Statistics as well as serve as an enabler in the creation of new statistics.

GSS indicated that it will intensify the use of data science in the next five years: to integrate online databanks, develop a standardised reporting dashboard for real-time monitoring of census and survey data collection, generate ecological statistics and automate quality checks on trade data.

Prof. Samuel Kobina Annim, Government Statistician, speaking at the launch event held concurrently with the occasion of African Statistics Day Celebration said: “GSS intends to apply data science for automation, standardisation and discovery of new data trends and analytical methods learning.

“Augmenting statistical operations with data science will support the continued production of relevant and timely data to meet the demands of modern data users,” he said.

Senior Lecturer, Department of Agriculture Economics and Agribusiness, University of Ghana, Dr. Edward Ebo Onumah, lauded the roadmap as a good initiative to harmonise the data space; stating that the need for such an initiative has been long overdue due to the influx of unverified and unsubstantiated data being used even by state officials as authoritative data.

“This initiative is very important – because if you are going to stand somewhere and say agriculture employs about 54 percent when others are saying it is 42 percent and so on, it creates a certain picture about the country to international eyes that is awkward."

“So, it is good for GSS to front and harmonise all data set in the space – including what the universities, researchers and other institutions put out there,” he stated.