Statistical Concepts, Methods and IT Applications

FASTAB for Census 2000

The Singapore Department of Statistics (DOS) plans to implement FASTAB for the forthcoming Census of Population 2000 which is Singapore's largest national statistical project. The use of FASTAB would enable the efficient and expeditious generation of tabulations by the end-users.

FASTAB stands for "Flexible and Swift Tabulation". It is jointly developed by the Department of Computer and Information Services, Ministry of Trade and Industry, and the Information Technology Institute (ITI), based on the user inputs of DOS. It is a sophisticated tabulation software tool operating on a client-server windows-based environment, with Graphical User-Interfaces (GIU). Users simply specify the parameters and data sources, and FASTAB will do the rest, thereby eradicating the need for specialised computer programming. Currently, DOS is working with ITI to improve the FASTAB prototype for better printing capabilities.

There will be potential benefits for DOS with the use of FASTAB. It allows for independent generation of data to meet specific needs as tabulations are done at the user's end. This would save time and cost significantly.

Source : Statistics Singapore Newsletter, January 1998