Kiribati has launched a project to update data on households and institutions across the nation's 23 inhabited islands.
The data will inform Kiribati's development planning and policy formation, ensuring that resources are allocated based on accurate information.
Houses will be located using GPS and the age and gender of householders will be updated.
The data will be used for three upcoming statistical collections: a Social Indicator Survey, a Household Income and Expenditure Survey, and the Population and Housing Census.
The project's start was marked with the signing of an agreement between the Pacific Community (SPC) and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).
Funding for the project has been provided by the Australian government.
The SPC's director of the Statistics for Development Division, Ofa Ketuu, said "good data was the foundation of good policy."
"Through this project Kiribati will be better positioned to make informed decisions on their development plans," Dr Ketuu said.
UNFPA's chair of the Pacific UN Country Team's Data Monitoring and Evaluation Group Bruce Campbell said the project would "build national capacity to produce and analyse fundamental data".
"We are pleased to see steadily increasing utilization of the data to guide critical policy and programming decisions across the development spectrum," Mr Campbell said.