NATIONAL STATISTICS OFFICE 2001 ANNUAL REPORT

Highlights
of the Year
Former NSO Administrator Awarded
For Exemplary Public Service
In July, Ateneo de Manila University
conferred its first GOVERNMENT SERVICE
AWARD on outgoing Administrator Tomas P. Africa.
He was awarded for “for inspiring creativity and
volunteerism and for exemplifying what a civil
servant should be-one who performs his day to day
duties with fidelity and integrity--thus providing a
living model of an honest public servant.”
Tomas Africa is an outstanding exception to
the view that the best and the brightest in the land
often end up working in private corporations or
opting to go abroad. An activist in his college days,
Tomas Africa transferred the site for struggle from
the streets of Mendiola to government offices where
the concern and passion he displayed for the poor
and the oppressed shaped his work as an
Administrator, especially as the head of the National
Statistics Office.
Tomas Africa elected to work in government
as a public servant and it is in this field that he spent
most of his professional life. He joined the National
Economic Development Authority in 1973, three
years after graduation from U.P. At the NEDA, he
directed the monitoring and evaluation of the
budgets and work programs of statistical
development projects, and coordinated the
development and maintenance of the management
information system in the office.
The Government Service Award was created by Ateneo de
Manila University on February 7, 1997 to recognize the fundamental role
of government service as a legitimate career option.
It is the University’s public acclamation of an individual or
groups of individuals who serve with distinction in the executive, legislative,
judicial branches or constituional bodies of government at the national and
local level.
Tomas P. Africa, Administrator of the National Statistics Office
is the first recipient of the Ateneo Government Service Award.
NSO staff throw a send-off party for outgoing NSO Administrator
Tomas P. Africa, who was to assume a UN post in Tokyo, Japan.
A few years later, he also Director of the
Statistical Programs and Resource Management
Office of the National Statistical Development
Program.
In 1989, Tomas Africa was named
Administrator of the National Statistics Office and
the ex-officio Civil Registrar General. When he
became administrator in 1989, he introduced a
series of innovations that would greatly improve the
running of the office as well as the condition of its
Five-Year Development Plan. It was the first time
that the organization, with the active participation of
middle management, visualized its role in society
and decided how it would play that role.
In 1998, the NSO become the first national
agency to win the Philippine Quality Award for
Commitment, largely because of Tomas Africa’s
emphasis on quality management as a tool for
improving the processing of statistical data as well
as general operations of the organization.
As a manager, Tomas Africa has always
believed that the employee’s welfare must come
first. He pushed for the regularization of over 600
casual employees, some of whom had been with the
office for more than 12 years. Despite opposition
from top management, he signed a Memorandum of
Understanding with the NSO Union of Statistics
Employees in 1989.
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2001 NSO Annual Report