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Singapore statistical system: From past to present
Official statistics in Singapore date back to 1871 when the first census of population was taken. Since then, censuses have been conducted regularly at ten-year intervals, except for a brief disruption during the World War II period. The Census Ordinance of 1880 constituted the first statistical legislation for Singapore.
Enacted in 1921, the Statistics Ordinance put in place a legal framework for the collection, preparation and publication of official statistics through the establishment of a Statistical Bureau headed by the Registrar of Malayan Statistics who was given the authority to issue requisitions for information.
The Statistical Bureau was renamed in the 1950s as the Singapore Department of Statistics (DOS) and the Registrar of Malayan Statistics as the Chief Statistician.
In the early days, the scale of statistical activities was modest in all government agencies and statistics were largely obtained as administrative by-products. DOS focused principally on external trade, shipping, cargo and basic demographic data, in part due to the predominance of entrepôt trade and port operations in Singapore’s economy.
Statistical activities expanded rapidly in the 1960s to cover manufacturing, commerce and service statistics.
Since 1973, Singapore has adopted a decentralised statistical system. Official statistics are collected and compiled by DOS as well as Research and Statistics Units (RSUs) in various government ministries and statutory boards.
Significant events in Singapore’s history of statistical development
The SingStat Mobile App was enhanced for better user experience with new features such as tailored data recommendations, quick preview of important indicators and seamless access with device-synchronisation.
The SingStat Table Builder was enhanced with new features such as a personalised page to save frequently accessed tables and notifications on data updates. Other improvements included better data search with auto-suggestions, API access for all tables to facilitate data retrieval, and mobile responsiveness.
DOS celebrated the Centennial anniversary. A commemorative video on 100 Years and Counting was released.
The tagline ‘Empowering You with Trusted Data’ was incorporated in the corporate logo to underscore our Department’s established standing as a provider of trusted data and data services for data-driven decision making.
The Data for Businesses webpage containing business tools was launched to empower businesses to make data-driven decisions with insights on their customers, industry, and business performance.
The SingStat Website retained top spot in the global Open Data Inventory (ODIN) 2020/21 ranking. ODIN 2020/21 ranked the National Statistics Offices’ websites of 187 countries on accessibility and availability of their data.
Singapore's sixth Census of Population after Independence and the fifteenth in the series of census taking, was conducted amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) webpage was published on SingStat Website to provide access to Singapore statistics on SDGs required for reporting and monitoring of Singapore’s progress.
Singapore completed benchmarking of national accounts to reference year 2015 and adopted recommendations of the System of National Accounts to compile annually reweighted chain volume measures of Gross Domestic Product.
Significant changes were made to the Statistics Act. The Chief Statistician was officially designated as the national statistical coordinator.