The Uganda Bureau of Statistics (UBOS) has been commended for its strong professionalism and ability to produce statistics on children which has helped in improving their welfare.
The commendation was given by Mr. Omar Abdi, Deputy Executive Director of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in charge of Field Results in a meeting held at the Statistics House Boardroom today, 22nd January 2016.
Mr. Abdi indicated that UNICEF as a guardian of the Convention on the rights of children needs a lot of data to report on the status of children world over.
“The UN relies on organisations such as UBOS to get such information at country level,” said Mr. Abdi adding that UBOS was very helpful in providing data on the progress of the Millennium Development Goals.
He informed the meeting that the UNICEF will continue to work with UBOS to track the progress of the achievement of indicators of the 2015 Sustainable Development Goals. He looked forward to the final agreed set of indicators for the SDGs
“Data is very important in decision making because right from politicians, academic researchers and funders, everyone wants to know quick results. We undertake our programmes and until the Demographic and Health Survey results are out, it is hard to tell our impact,” he revealed.
Ms. Imelda Atai Musana, the Deputy Executive Director, Statistical Production and Development at UBOS thanked UNICEF for the partnership that the two organisations enjoy. UNICEF has supported UBOS since 2000 particularly in undertaking the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS).
Ms. Musana further explained that UBOS in partnership with UNICEF had developed a tool named the uSurvey which stands for “universal” survey to be used for survey data collection.
“UBOS and UNICEF teamed up again to conduct a Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) survey using the uSurvey in the FGM districts of Uganda including Kapchorwa and Moroto such that within 5 days after data collection, the report of the findings was concluded,” Ms. Musana said.
The uSurvey is an application developed by UBOS staff in partnership with UNICEF which only requires an enumerator to have a technical gadget say mobile telephone or tablet which can be preloaded with the questionnaire as well as the possible responses.
Ms. Musana commended the technological advancements being developed and noting “this will propel UBOS to another level of mobile data collection, which not only minimises costs but also enables UBOS to produce more timely data”.
It was revealed that UNICEF is also supporting the 2016 Uganda Demographic Health Survey by providing 132 windows based tablets with all the data processing accessories to support the Computer Assisted Personal Interviews (CAPI), Provision of the Salt Testing Kits and USD 500,000 to support implementation of DHS. The survey is slated to start in April 2016.
“The Survey will also have a module to capture information on indicators on Early Childhood Development, children discipline and children disability which are new areas,” noted Ms. Musana.
UBOS usually works with UNICEF on further analysis of data from national censuses and surveys. For instance in 2015, it produced an equity report on children / women who have been left behind in different programme areas covering all areas of the Country Programme.
It is expected that this year, the organization will further collaborate in producing a report on children and a child poverty (income-based) report following the release of the 2014 Population and Housing Census results.