In August 1999, the Singapore Department of Statistics launched a new service to facilitate businesses to submit statistical returns. This service, known as ‘E-Survey’, allows secured submission of statistical information via Internet. The E-Survey is developed as one of the modules under the Survey Answering Guide Expert (SAGE) project, a joint R&D collaboration between Singapore Department of Statistics, Kent Ridge Digital Labs and Knowledge Engineering Pte Ltd.

The E-Survey service is currently made available to all the respondents of the Annual Surveys of Commerce and Services 1998. The surveys cover about 16,000 companies and businesses and were previously conducted using the conventional mail-in and mail-back method. The introduction of E-Survey has provided respondents with a convenient, fast and easy alternative to mail and fax submission.

The accounts for accessing the E-Survey are pre-created. However, respondents are required to identify themselves with a unique company reference number and Survey PIN before they are allowed to login to the E-survey server. The E-Survey employs a secured encryption protocol to ensure confidentiality of the completed form transmitted via the Internet.

The minimum requirements to use the E-Survey service are an Internet-enabled Pentium class PC with a browser that supports Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) technology for secured transmission of data.

With the adoption of the E-Survey, the completion and submission of survey returns can be done entirely online. A comprehensive list of online helps and verification checks is provided to assist respondents in filling in the required information. Information submitted through the Internet is automatically verified and coded. This helps to eliminate the need to perform manual data entry as well as minimise posting & coding errors. By reducing the time taken to process the survey forms, the Department can compile the data quickly and thus improve the overall data timeliness.

In a move to enhance the overall standard of the statistical service, the Department is also working on plans to improve and extend the convenience of E-Survey to other surveys.