Understanding role of statistics in big data era

One of our main aims in 2018 is to bring together national, regional and international professionals to understand the role of statistics in the era of digital revolution or big data, Sabir al Harbi, Director-General of GCC Statistical Center of Cooperation Council of Arab Countries of the Gulf, has said.

He was speaking at the first-ever GCC Statistics Day observed at the GCC-Stats Centre under the auspices of Dr Khalifa al Barwani, CEO of National Centre for Statistics and Information.

The objective of the day is to understand the importance of statistics in our daily lives, said Al Harbi.

“A classic way of conducting statistics is by knocking the doors. We go to households and companies and collect data using a questionnaire. A few years later, we developed tablets for collecting data. With the fourth industrial revolution we are making huge developments, but many jobs will be lost, certain domains will disappear and even the role of governments will change. I think statistics will be one of the areas that will be impacted,” he said.

According to him, four to five years from now, business will not be conducted the way it is now. “We need to upgrade ourselves, we need to see how we can benefit from data revolution because data is available everywhere even if it is not from official resources. They are realtime statistics.”

“Statistics is important in planning, socio-economic development and environmental policies. So I think it is very important that we enhance the understanding of statistics, enhance the cooperation between all the stakeholders in Oman and in other GCC countries. This cooperation is vital to ensure the accuracy of statistics and consequently the accuracy of planning,” he said.

The day also celebrated the achievements made by statistical centres in various GCC countries in collecting accurate data, improving data collection and for being part of sustainable development.