A SOURCE OF INFORMATION, SOFTWARE AND ASSISTANCE

When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind: it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely, in your thoughts, advanced to the stage of science.
-- William Thomson, Lord Kelvin

Kelvin may have overstated a bit, but knowledge for development starts with statistics, in the original meaning, of quantitative infomration about the state. In my career, many years ago, I had the opportunity to work with the Center described below, and they did a great job not only in developing software, but in helping developing nations build the capacity to collect, organize and analyze statistical data.

International Programs Center, U.S. Census Bureau
The IPC conducts demographic and socioeconomic studies and strengthens statistical development around the world through technical assistance, training, and software products. Its work has been commissioned and funded by U.S. federal agencies, international organizations, non-governmental organizations, private businesses, and other governments. The website is a useful source of demographic information. Information resourcs include the “HIV/AIDS Surveillance Data Base” among others. Microcomputer software and applications that can be downloaded free include: “Census and Survey Processing System (CSPRO)”, “Integrated Microcomputer Processing System (IMPS)”, “Population Analysis System (PAS)”, and “Rural/Urban Projections (RUP)”.

And while I was looking for the Kelvin quote above, I found this very useful site:

Counting the Numbers
Judith Axler Turner’s “Editor's Gloss” from The Journal of Electronic Publishing December 2000, Volume 6, Issue 2. The website has links to the following: “Tenure and Promotion: Should You Publish in Electronic Journals?” by Aldrin E. Sweeney; “How Scientists Retrieve Publications: An Empirical Study of How the Internet Is Overtaking Paper Media” by Bo-Christer Björk and Ziga Turk; “Consortia vs. Reform: Creating Congruence” by Margaret Landesman and Johann van Reenen; “How Much Information?” by Peter Lyman and Hal R. Varian; “When Shall We Be Free?” by Peter Singer; and “Q.A.: Access Code Redux” by Thom Lieb.