Dr. Fahd bin Sulaiman Al-Tukhaifi has been president of the General Authority for Statistics (GASTAT) since 2016.
Al-Tekhaifi graduated with a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from King Saud University in 1992, going on to gain a master’s degree in statistics from Colorado State University in 1996 and a Ph.D. in applied statistics and research methodology from the University of Northern Colorado in 2001.
He worked as a financial program manager at the Institute of Public Administration from 1993 to 2005, before becoming project director in the Engineering Information Systems department at Zuhair Fayez Partnership Consultants, where he worked until 2007.
He moved on to the Capital Market Authority, where he was manager of the research department, before joining the Minister of Labor and Social Development as assistant deputy minister for development in 2011. Four years later, he moved to the Central Department of Statistics and Information, where he worked for one year before taking up his current role.
Recently, Al-Tukhaifi attended the first meeting of the United Nations’ Statistical Commission Friends of the Chair Group, held at the UN headquarters in New York.
Al-Tukhaifi identified technology’s effect on data gathering as one of the biggest challenges facing statisticians today, and suggested that big data could replace traditional statistical activities as an innovative way of producing official statistics — a move he said would support many areas of development.