In 2006-7, the statistical office of Iraq (COSIT), in cooperation with the Kurdistan Regional Statistical Office (KRSO), worked with Sistemas Integrales to implement the country's first fully national survey for many years. An initiative of the World Bank's, this survey is known by its acronym, IHSES.

Conducting a household survey in Iraq threw up specific challenges related to the security situation there. For example, from time to time, field-work in a given district might become temporarily impossible. The Sistemas Integrales consultants helped COSIT towards a solution that was both rigorous and feasible. When such situations arose, the affected field-team was reassigned to another randomly selected area which had not yet been visited; they would return to the first area later, once order there had been restored. Another security problem was addressed by convening planning and development meetings outside Iraq. Although this was done out of necessity, it proved so successful - with survey managers able to give their full attention to IHSES and the tasks which lay ahead - that Sistemas Integrales plans to replicate it in future projects in other, more peaceful countries.

The first results from IHSES are already being used to implement poverty reduction initiatives at the governorate level, to reform the Saddam-era rationing system and in other ways. For the next Iraqi household survey, Sistemas Integrales' innovative  approach to data-entry will be adopted, with each interviewer entering his or her own data and transmitting them to the central database. 

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