ECLAC regional workshop on the development of REDATAM applications for the dissemination of census data

A team drawn from ECLAC’s subregional headquarters for the Caribbean and the regional headquarters in Santiago, Chile will be holding a training workshop to support the statistical offices of Grenada, Antigua and Barbuda, and Barbados in the development of web-based applications for the dissemination of national census data.

Organised at the request of the respective governments, the workshop will take place from 29 September to 10 October 2014 in Saint George’s, Grenada, and follows a similar workshop held in Trinidad and Tobago in February 2014.

REDATAM is a software program developed by the Latin American and Caribbean Demographic Centre (CELADE - the Population Division of ECLAC) that provides users with a quick and easy means of creating, processing and analyzing census databases.

The software also makes it possible for statistical offices to provide controlled public access to datasets, via the internet, in a way which protects the confidentiality of individual census records.    

REDATAM (visit the website here) is used extensively in Latin America. Following the 2000 round of censuses, four countries in the Caribbean subregion used REDATAM to provide online access to their census datasets.

Following the most recent round of censuses, ECLAC is seeking to encourage more Caribbean countries to disseminate their census data in this way and will continue to offer capacity building workshops in the use of the REDATAM software for staff of national statistical offices and departments.

In addition to census data, REDATAM can also be used to provide online access to survey datasets such as labour force surveys or living conditions surveys. In the long term, improved online access to these census and survey data sources will encourage their use in research, development planning and evidence-based policy-making.