New Delhi, Jan 29 (IANS): The Statistics and Programme Implementation Ministry on Tuesday signed an agreement with National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) to use new data technologies, knowledge generation and knowledge sharing in the field of official statistics.

The Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) would lead to strengthening and better monitoring of data quality and timeliness of various statistical products and services generated by the Ministry including Gross Domestic Product (GDP), economic census, price statistics, Index of Industrial Production (IIP) and Annual Survey of Industries (ASI), an official statement said.

The MoU would lead to use of technology for survey instruments and processing of data for large scale surveys and data analytics while also creating a national data warehouse to integrate administrative statistical datasets available up to the local government level, it said.

It would also help leverage administrative data to improve the quality and coverage of core statistics apart from setting up common standards and protocols for data collection and its quality.