The Cairo Demographic Center is the first regional center dedicated to population studies and research. Demography, simply put, is the 'science of populations.' It involves the study of population characteristics, which can be quantitative as population density, growth, and size or qualitative as education, nutrition, and wealth. Ultimately, demography provides statistical insights into individuals, including aspects like growth components, fertility, mortality, and migration.
The field of demography has various branches, including:
- Historical demography, which studies ancient societies.
- Descriptive demography, which focuses on population numbers.
- Theoretical demography, which addresses population issues.
In line with the presidential directive to implement the Cairo Demographic Center system and the Egyptian Family Development Project, the service platform aligns with this vision of driving digital transformation across government entities, offering an expanded range of online services for individuals interacting with government agencies.
The Pain: The Situation Prior to Project Implementation
The research and analysis process at the Cairo Demographic Center involved multiple steps, often requiring input from many employees, which resulted in low accuracy. Several key challenges included:
- Manual processes consumed excessive cost, time, and effort.
- Lack of integration capabilities.
- Low level of accuracy.
- Absence of statistical and geographic performance indicators.
- No spatial analysis available for decision support.
The Proposed Solution:
The Geographic System of the Demographic Observatory is a platform developed using the latest Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology, leveraging Esri's state-of-the-art tools. It integrates diverse geographic and demographic data from the Cairo Demographic Center, providing a comprehensive set of statistical and geographic performance indicators. This system empowers users with advanced spatial analysis capabilities, facilitating more informed planning and decision-making.
The Steps Taken: Our Path Towards the Solution
In an effort to address the challenges at hand, we embarked on a strategic approach, ensuring that our proposed solution was effectively and meticulously implemented:
- A suite of web maps and performance indicators specific to the family development activities of the Cairo Demographic Center. These applications also include the geographic distribution of these activities across various administrative levels.
- A set of demographic performance indicators and interactive maps illustrating population distribution across different geographic areas.
- A collection of performance indicators and interactive maps detailing the distribution of healthcare facilities, their geographic service areas, and their impact on the population distribution
- A collection of performance indicators and interactive maps showing the distribution of educational institutions, their geographic service areas, and their impact on population distribution.
Challenges Faced During Implementation
- Resistance During Requirements Gathering: Significant resistance was encountered from end users during the requirements gathering phase. Overcoming this resistance required additional time and effort to address their concerns, build trust, and demonstrate the value of the project.
- Request for Major Changes: After the platform implementation was completed, the client requested a major change in the project deployment. This required substantial modifications to the platform's structure and implementation within a short timeframe. The team faced considerable challenges in adapting to these changes while ensuring minimal disruption to the platform's core functionalities and features.
Situation After Successful Implementation
The implementation of the project brought significant enhancements to our system and addressed the issues we previously faced:
- Integration of available demographic and geographic data from the center.
- Extraction of statistical and geographic performance indicators from the demographic and geographic data available through the Digital Demographic Center platform.
- Extraction of statistical and geographic performance indicators from various activity data provided through the Demographic Center platform.
- Provision of various geographic maps to illustrate the distribution of demographic data across different administrative boundaries within the country (governorates, districts, centers).
- Offering spatial analysis to support the selection and planning of future activities related to family development.