Expert Group Meeting: Big Data in Official Statistics in Asia and the Pacific

Ms Rachael Beaven has over thirty years of experience in government statistics, in particular data preparation and analysis.  She has also worked extensively with governments, multilateral agencies and the statistical community, most notably through the United Nations Statistics Division, ECA, ESCAP, World Bank and Paris21.

Ms. Beaven has provided a wide range of technical support, from improving economic and financial statistics to estimating local population using geospatial data.  She is one of the founders of the Inclusive Data Charter, launched at the 2018 High-Level Political Forum, to mobilize political commitments and to advance inclusive and disaggregated data.  Ms. Beaven also led a programme on monitoring the Sustainable Development Goals with United Nations Statistics Division and established a data science hub with the Office for National Statistics of the United Kingdom to explore use of data science, in particular geospatial as well as big data, to monitor progress.

Ms. Beaven holds Master’s degrees in Statistical Applications in Business and Government as well as Business Administration, and a Bachelor’s degree in Geography and Geology.

Mr. Lay Chhan has been in his current post as Deputy Director General of National Institute of Statistics (NIS) of the Ministry of Planning in 2013. He leads National Statistical Indicators Database System Unit in maintaining, updating and disseminating of data for National Strategic Development Plan, including Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). He also works as assistant to the Director General, responsible for leading and managing the preparation of National Strategy for the Development of Statistics (NSDS), statistical coordination and international cooperation. With 20 years of experience in Statistics, his focus is on survey, national accounts statistics, economic statistics, and statistical policy and development. He also has expertise on various statistical surveys such as household socio-economic survey, labor force survey, disability module survey, and establishment survey. Mr. Lay has participated in numerous international workshops and meetings, including extensive training courses on practical statistics, sampling design, data analysis using computer programming, project management and leadership. He holds a Master’s Degree in Business Administration from Asian Institute of Technology, Thailand.

Mr. Ariunbold Shagdar is serving as the Director of Census and Data analysis department, National Statistics Office of Mongolia as of September 30, 2022. He has almost twenty years of experience in official statistics, in particular sample design of survey and data analysis in Mongolia.

>He holds an MSc in Applied Statistics and a Bachelor’s degree in Economics and Statistics.

Mr. Somethea Buoy is director department of Statistical Information Services, National Institute of Statistics (NIS), Ministry of Planning, Kingdom of Cambodia.

In February 2022, he was nominated as Director Department of Statistical Information Services, National Institute of Statistics. He is in charge of coordination and cooperation with stakeholders within the framework of disseminating statistical information, data communication and data exchange, open and big data.

His education background in Business Administrative, Demographic, Statistics and ICT. He obtained bachelor degree of Business Administrative in August 2003, and obtained two master decree, Master of Science in Information and Technology, (MSIT) in Cambodia in February 2011 and Master of Art in Population Studies (MA) in June 2013 at International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS), Mumbai, India.

Patrick McSharry is a Professor at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University and Chief Analytics and Technology Officer at World Data Lab. He is also a Research Fellow at the Kigali Collaborative Research Centre (KCRC) and Advisor to the World Bank funded African Centre of Excellence in Data Science (ACE-DS) and GSMA Foundation's Inclusive Tech Lab. Having served 22 years at Oxford University, he remains affiliated with the Oxford Man Institute of Quantitative Finance and the Oxford Internet Institute. He is a Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society, Senior Member of the IEEE and advises organizations in the public and private sectors.  He was a Royal Academy of Engineering Research Fellow and held two Marie Curie Fellowships (UK and Spain).  He takes a multidisciplinary approach to developing quantitative techniques for automating decision-making and improving risk management. His research focuses on artificial intelligence, machine learning, data science, big data, forecasting, predictive analytics, and the analysis of human behavior. He has published over 100 peer-reviewed papers and three books including the "Big Data Revolution" (2015). He is currently building multidisciplinary partnerships to create data-driven and sustainable solutions to global challenges.

Mr. Nyambayar Zorigt has over 15 years work experience in official statistics. In particular, over the last decade, he specialized in the field of using GIS for statistics production. He played a main role in mapping the official statistics, incluing the population census geographical databases, and other social-economic geospatial databases and production of related core spatial statistics. Lately, Mr. Nyambayar started to work on use of geospatial data as well as big data sources for production of SDG indicators. Also, he has a hands-on experience estimating crop type using RS. He was the leader of the team to develop 18 spatial data standards, launched at the 2020, his wide range of technical support and contributions helped a lot to create basic spatial database platform for Mongolia and to reach the project aim. He holds a bachelor's degree in land management.

Ms. Peta Darby is an Assistant Director in the Population Statistics Program at the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) and has a background in statistics specialising in statistical methodology. Peta’s current work in the Population Statistics Program focuses on strategic change and innovation building toward new ways to produce population statistics. Peta has held a variety of roles in the ABS including in the Census Program, Data Integration Program, Australian Marriage Law Postal Survey Taskforce, Policy and Legislation Section, and other strategic projects. In addition, Peta has been posted from the ABS to the Australian Government Treasury and the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe Statistics Division.

Matthew worked in the UK’s Office for National Statistics for 15 years with a focus on the development of its National Statistical System and managing international relations. He is now a consultant in statistical capacity building and the use of data in international development, including in-depth experience in Africa and Asia-Pacific at national and regional levels. He is Co-Chair of the International Statistical Institute’s (ISI) Capacity Building Committee.

Sovannaroth Tey is an Associate Statistician at the Statistics Division, ESCAP, where he contributes to the management and delivery of technical assistance and knowledge management programmes on big data, data integration, civil registration and vital statistics. Prior to joining ESCAP, he was a Senior Programme Manager at Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade managing Government of Australia's bilateral development programmes and budgets advancing renewable energy, clean water, climate-resilient roads, and public financial management improvements in Cambodia.