Dr. Ibrahim Al-Assaf, minister of finance and national economy, has said that accurate information regarding the Saudi population and the rate of unemployment in the Kingdom will be made available next year.
Academics, researchers and students, whose work has long been hampered by difficulties in finding accurate information, are bound to welcome the news.
Like many of my colleagues, I have long called for better access to information for researchers and graduate students to allow their studies to match reality and present practical solutions. Yet again and again we are told that specific information we request is classified or unavailable. Researchers then need either to make assumptions based on guesswork or to resort to theoretical studies.
The contradictory figures given regarding population or the number of foreign workers in the Kingdom, on the national debt or the quantity of ground water, are examples of this.
Accurate information is vital not only to researchers but also to decision-makers, planners and economists to enable them to plan accurately for the future.
The importance of any given information is based on four aspects, namely the quantity and the quality of the relevant information and the period and location the information relates to. The role of the researcher is then to classify and connect the information and apply it to the current situation and to analyze the results.
I hope that the statement by the minister of finance is the first step toward facilitating access to information for planners, researchers and students. I am looking forward to the establishment of an independent central department for information and statistics, under the control of the Council of Ministries, whose job it is to gather information and make it freely available to all who require it for study and research.
Arab News From the Local Press 15 February 2003
