The Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) has conducted household surveys on a range of topics, dating back to 1987 when Sistemas Integrales helped implement the country’s first Living Standards Measurement Survey.

In the 2000s, a full review of various household surveys conducted by the GSS was commissioned by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), with support from the World Bank and the German development agency. The review was to assess whether the array of surveys was meeting the needs of Ghana’s national development plan and of the Millennium Development Goals. It occurred at a time when the GSS had begun to shift from a donor-driven model of survey scheduling to a self-financed scheme.

Sistemas Integrales, through its participation in the review, identified a set of addressable issues such as the following:

• significant duplication among the indicators measured by different surveys as well as information gaps
• a mismatch between the periodicity of donor-driven surveys and the Ghanaian government’s planning cycle.

In response to the findings, Sistemas Integrales:

• proposed merging two separate surveys (GLSS and MICS) and launching new business and labor force surveys
• prepared a roadmap, linking census and survey activity over the future sixteen years, with a new recommended sequence of surveys tied in with the government’s four-year plans.