Speaker
Description
Making historical analog data Re-useable:
a successful outcome of Data Rescue/Conservation Discipline at Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics.
Short Title: Historical Data Conversion and Archiving.
Chandra Shekhar Roy1
Alamgir Hossain2
1Senior Maintenance Engineer-IT, Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, Statistics & Informatics Division,
Ministry of Planning, E27/A, Agargaon, Dhaka-1207, Bangladesh.
2Computer Lab Manager, Labcom Technology, House 17/1D, Road 28, Dhaka-1209,
Corresponding author E-mail: csroy1@gmail.com
Abstract: Bangladesh starts its journey focusing on ICT with a view to realizing the vision of ‘Smart Bangladesh 2041’. Thus, in the long run, census and survey data can be used exhaustively in the planning process to transform into Smart Bangladesh by 2041. In Bangladesh, several types of official data are released under the Statistics Act. Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) played a significant role in the field of historical Statistical data preservation. After the independence of Bangladesh in 1971, there was a rich repository of statistical microdata in IBM 360 to ES/9000 model mainframe tapes dating back to the late 1970s and early 2000s. Almost 8600 nine-track ½ inch spool tapes were used to preserve those data. Recently BBS has converted all those data from EBCDIC format to ASCII format. About 165 data sets have been recovered which have been declared as Digital Assets. The overarching objective is to strengthen the prevailing national statistical archiving system. BBS will be making available this large volume of converted data to the citizens of Bangladesh as well as globally so that academic and scholarly debates can take place taking cognizance of historical data. Since independence, 2,391 BBS surveys and census publications have been digitized and converted to e-book systems. The overarching objective is to strengthen the prevailing national statistical archiving system. By revisiting time series data, it is hoped that well-informed and meticulous policies can be designed and formulated in the future. Most fundamentally, the availability and easy accessibility to such a large volume of Big Data will inspire reassessing economic theories and indicators of development informing Bangladesh’s position in global rankings like Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). An alternate backup has been established for data Preservation at a distance of 200 km from NSO headquarters.
Keywords. Historical data, Data preservation, Microdata, Statistics Act, SDG. IBM, Archiving.
