Technical Assistance on Upgrading Information and Communication Technologies of TurkStat

The purpose of "Technical Assistance Project for Upgrading ICT Services of TurkStat” was to improve the technical capacity in ICT infrastructure and services and to ensure more effective processes on collection, compilation and dissemination of statistical data. The project was conducted by KMO Bilgi Sistemleri Müşavirlik A.Ş., in consortium with SOGETI Luxembourg S.A., AGEM Bilişim Yaz.Dan.Eğt.Hiz.Ltd.Şti. It commenced on October 1^st 2015, having duration of 24 months, ended on September 30^th 2017.

The closure meeting was held on September 13, 2017 which enabled a sharing platform for project achievements and outputs as well as technical panels focusing on key technology topics of; big data and data security. Key Note speech by Menno Van DOORN from SOGETI (Director VINT Research Institute for the Analysis on new Technology) with striking context on artificial intelligence staged the future of the data world.  

The Project was composed of complementary consultancy and training activities

Consultancy Activities (515 expert days) were conducted under the following 10 topics;

Trainings (303 days of training & 560 attendees) under 14 titles & 34 different topics;

The project aimed and achieved improvements in the following:

• Knowledge and competency of IT Staff
• Software Development, Test and Quality Management
• Application User Interface Standardization
• Information Security
• Disaster Recovery and Action Plan
• System / Network Infrastructure and Management
• Data/Database Management, Security and Performance

For the official statistical production, sustainable IT infrastructure is the key. Having prescient vision, TurkStat Information Technology Department focuses on; sustainable system and applications, standardisation of process and components for high quality outputs, utilisation of most appropriate technology and tools, investing to human resources and collaborative teamwork. “Harzemli” is the key in-house developed platform for collection and processing of statistical data and MEDAS is the database for dissemination. IT has set clear objectives for sustainable IT infrastructure and takes the steps to reach there. In this respect, the EU funded “Technical Assistance Project for Upgrading ICT Services of TurkStat” was major milestone. With this project TurkStat has invested in; Human Resources, Data Center, Network Infrastructure, Databases and Software Development.

Regarding the Human Resources; the technical capacity is improved with received advanced training courses and senior consultancy services. Level of knowledge increased, the gained knowledge and outputs have been reflected to IT processes and outputs, standardisation and common understanding is achieved.

Regarding the Data Centre; Disaster Recovery Centre designed and documented, important steps were taken for its realisation. More effective utilisation of the system infrastructure resources is obtained including; physical servers, storage and virtualisation. System security and performance tuning is improved.

Regarding Network; system continuity is ensured with improvements in network topology design, manageability, security and performance. Knowledge base and competency is improved in designing, operating and managing of the network infrastructure which is being applied to current systems and data centre as well as planning and improvement of the future systems.

Regarding Databases; system continuity and manageability is attained with improvements in database management and design, data accessibility is improved with performance tuning of the databases. Roadmap and studies are accomplished for migration to open source database platform. Studies and trainings on Big data are conducted including methodology and toolset.

Regarding Software Development; major outputs and milestones are achieved concerning development processes, standardisation and quality of outputs, software maintainability, improvement in collaborative teamwork platform. Software development life cycle is improved including; test management, configuration management, version management, performance tuning, information security, issue management and BPMN compliant workflow implementation for IT processes. Corporate standardisation in user interface of software applications is set and being applied for current and future applications. The knowledge base and competency is improved with trainings and workshops covering broad range of topics of software development that are also reflected to the IT standards of TurkStat.

The project was executed in great collaboration of TAT team and TURKSTAT project counterparts in Information Technology Department and International Relations Department. The project objectives are completely achieved, technical capacity is improved with the resulting outputs and deliverables.

http://www.tuik.gov.tr/arastirmaveprojeler/uluslararasi/docs/ICT_Kapanis_Konferansi.pdf

http://www.tuik.gov.tr/arastirmaveprojeler/uluslararasi/docs/Brochure.pdf

http://www.tuik.gov.tr/arastirmaveprojeler/uluslararasi/docs/StatisticsAtCrossroads-10.pdf