Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística

We are deeply sorry to inform that the IBGE Data Processing Director, Mr. David Wu Tai, aged 71 years old, passed away in the evening of April 29, 2020. He had been hospitalized due to COVID-19 on the 17th of April at the ICU of the Unimed Hospital in Barra da Tijuca, Rio de Janeiro.

Mr. David Wu Tai has pursued a brilliant and inspiring career at the IBGE for more than 40 years, where he could lead the main modernization initiatives in the recent history of the Institute.  He stood out for his works related to the use and dissemination of statistics through the Internet and the adoption of technological tools in the territorial base surveys. He was also a remarkable leader ahead of the enumeration operations. 

With a Master's Degree in Economics from the Getúlio Vargas Foundation, Mr. Wu Tai started at the IBGE in 1978 as Coordinator of the Project Consolidated Accounts of the Public Sector. Later, in the state of São Paulo, he worked as the Coordinator of the 1980 Population Census, and then, as Chief of the Collection Division at the State Branch.

In 1988-1990 he worked as General Director of the IBGE in Rio de Janeiro, where he was also Head of the State Branch of Rio de Janeiro and of the Operational Department of Censuses. Between 1995-2019, he held the position of General Coordinator of the Center for Information Documentation and Dissemination (CDDI). During this period, he led the process of inserting the IBGE in the Internet, adopting international recommendations and making information about all the IBGE surveys available, for free, 24 hours a day, to Brazilian society. Mr. Wu Tai has also managed to join the geographic and statistical data from the IBGE together, having contributed as well to consolidate the Institute's presence in the Geographic Information System (GIS) Era by making IBGE digital cartographic bases available through the Internet.

Mr. Wu Tai has opened the away for the democratization of access by researchers, companies and public bodies to the IBGE collection of maps and geographic publications. Thanks to those and many other initiatives, today the IBGE portal on the Internet has an annual average of 1.7 trillion hits of nearly 61 million users, among whom academic and governmental institutions, researchers, students and journalists all around the world.

In 2019-2020, Mr. David Wu Tai was appointed Director of Data Processing at the IBGE and President of the Population Census Operational Commission. During this period, he contributed to the modernization of the Census monitoring and supervision systems and adopted Big Data solutions towards the updating and improvement of the collection methods, records and databases used by the Institute.

The IBGE and all its servants and stakeholders feel sorry and sympathize with Ms. Maria Vilma, his beloved wife and coworker at the IBGE, as well as with his family and friends.

IBGE
April 30, 2020