Astana, 22 October. The Bureau of National Statistics will draw on existing databases — state, banking, till and telecoms — instead of collecting reports from business and households again, the bureau's head Maksat Turlubayev told Kazinform.
Inflation is already calculated taking till receipts into account, and the bureau plans to count tourists and migration using mobile operators' data.
"Today huge amounts of data already exist in state databases, banks, telecoms companies, till systems, satellite and geographic information services. So we face a fundamental question: why ask citizens and business for data again if the state or the economy already has this information?" Turlubayev said. He described the principle of the reform as a move "from collecting reports to working with data", and its rule as "collect once, use many times".
Data from fiscal system operators, that is, from till receipts, are already used to calculate inflation: they show what people buy and how much they pay, which goods they buy more often, which they give up and what they replace pricier goods with. But they cannot fully replace price monitoring: one has to check which shops and goods are covered and whether the data can be compared with previous years. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which reviewed Kazakhstan's statistics, recommends continuing work with receipts, studying retail chains' data and widening price monitoring in rural areas.
The bureau is testing mobile operators' data to determine more precisely the number of tourists, their routes and length of stay, and later plans to apply the same approach to migration. The bureau acknowledges the limits: not everyone uses the same operator, and a phone signal says nothing about the purpose of a trip. Artificial intelligence will be used more widely to check reports, find unusual values and prepare analysis; chatbots for users are already working. Household surveys will not be dropped: a receipt shows what a family bought but not why it began spending less. By 2030 the bureau intends to expand digital sources and automate a large part of its work.
A shopper who takes a till receipt is now, without knowing it, filling in a statistical form.
What it means: Official statistics are moving from questionnaires to ready-made digital data. Business should have to report less and figures should better reflect real purchases and movements of people, although the new sources still need to be checked against the old ones.
Who benefits: Companies that will no longer have to resubmit information already held in information systems. Users of statistics, from the government to a citizen gauging the rise in the cost of living, if the new sources really give a fuller picture of prices and movements.
Background: The Bureau of National Statistics is part of the Agency for Strategic Planning and Reforms; its system was reviewed by the OECD, which considers that the country has a solid basis for reform but needs data quality control and coordination among state bodies.
List of sources used: Kazinform, Negizgi Aqsha
Artificial intelligence was used in preparing this material.
