Central Department of Statistics ----------------------------------------------------- The Central Department of Statistics (CDS) was established due to the public Statistics law issued by the Royal Decree no. (23) dated 7/12/1379.
It is considered the central authority of statistics in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
CDS shall be entrusted with the task of conducting all commercials, economic, health, educational, industrial, financial,
agricultural or any other statistics as required.
By virtue of the law, CDS is responsible for developing the scientific methodology,
and statistical or technical instructions, which help the other statistical departments in different governmental agencies to collect
and prepare different statistics related to the work of that agency.
These departments will provide the CDS, regularly, by statistical
data.
It is obvious, from the above mentioned, that the CDS’S role is not restricted only to the collection and processing of statistical
data and providing users with them, but it includes also activating the statistical work in the governmental agencies and developing
it through the coordination with their statistical departments, to prepare their statistics related to its official tasks. ------------------------------
Organizational Structure of CDS
------------------------------------------------- The organizational structure indicates three major sectors for CDS each of which includes several administrations and units as follows:
**Statistical Affairs:
1-Statistics Department Of Productive Sectors. 2-National Income Statistics Department 3-Prices and Indexes Statistics Department 4-Foreign Trade Statistics Department
The other four administrations are specialized in the field of Population and social Statistics as follows: 1-Population and Vital Statistics Department. 2-Social Statistics Department. 3-Government Services Statistics Department. 4-Mapping Unit
**National Computer Center (NCC) The NCC includes several major departments and units, which are:
1-Computer Operations Department 2-System Programming Department 3-Application Programs Department 4-Users Support Department
**General Administration of Administrative and Financial Affairs It includes Personnel Affairs Department, Financial Department, Administrative communications Department, General Services Department and Printing and Publication Department.
Spatial Data Distribution ------------------------------------------------- When we look at major forces of the 21st century like population growth, economic development and consumption of natural resources, we see that all of them have a spatial component. Data produced by census is a primary source of information needed for effective development, planning and monitoring of population, services distribution and socio economic.
The census database contains a lot of attribute information which can be linked to spatial data by spatial referencing. Relating the spatial component along with non-spatial attributes of the existing organization data enhances user's understanding and gives new insights into the patterns and relationships in the data that would otherwise not be found and to enhance the decision making process. Taking into consideration that many potential users of spatial information don’t know about GIS technology, the development of an Enterprise GIS solution would serve two crucial purposes. Firstly, it would allow the users to operate the system without having to go the underlying intricacies of GIS and RDBMS technology. Secondly, it would allow sharing of information and technical experience between a wide range of users.
