Survey planning - Rationale

Considerable financial and technical resources are needed to implement large-scale surveys and censuses. Lacking resources, developing countries often carry out such activities infrequently or on an ad-hoc, donor-driven basis. This often results in poor over-time comparability of data, in non-optimal timing of data collection, and in data gaps or conflicting data collection activities. To remedy the situation, action is needed at both the national and international levels to:

• Better coordinate financial support to data collection , to avoid duplicated or conflicting activities,
• Ensure that cost-effective data collection programs are implemented,
• Enhance over-time comparability of surveys, and
• Foster the continuity of survey programs.

A necessary --although not sufficient-- step in attaining these goals is the proper sharing of information on planned survey activities. To this effect, a joint information system on on-going and planned surveys and censuses (ISPS) has been designed by the World Bank, Development Data Group. The ISPS aims at providing information useful to donors as well as to data users, who will find in it an "advanced release calendar" for key indicators and data.