Cameroon: Developing a microdata dissemination policy for the National Statistical System (October 2014)

The INS in Cameroon held a consultative workshop which reviewed a microdata dissemination policy in Yaoundé, Cameroon. The dates of the workshop were from Oct. 8-10, 2014. A general dissemination policy already exists and at the request of the INS the ADP provided assistance to discuss microdata access between users and producers. The ANSD (National Statistics Office) from Senegal provided the key facilitator to assist in the process and the views of users and producers were taken into account in the consultation of the policy.

A microdata dissemination policy annex will be finalized and distributed for final approval. As a result of the workshop, other data producers in the National Statistical System have agree to share their metadata in a central catalogue. The data archive software (NADA) is flexible and can provide an architecture in which different producer collections are independently maintained by “Collection Administrators”. Another aspect covered was the need to track publications that use microdata. The Citation Manager functionality of the NADA system was also demonstrated. The various users of data, namely the IFORD (Regional Demographic Research Institute) have agreed to use the citation manager to track publications. The IFORD NADA (their catalogue of research projects) will be integrated with the AFRISTAT regional NADA currently under construction.

The ADP continues to identify areas where synergy between users and producers at both country and regional levels can contribute to better use of survey data.