Published: 29 June 2012

Thirteen participants, mostly middle-level national accounts statisticians, from Azerbaijan; Afghanistan; China; Fiji; Hong Kong, China; Indonesia; Republic of Korea and Singapore attended the course. Mr Aloke Kar, SIAP lecturer and Ms Chellam Palanyandy, lead professional (statistics and statistical capacity building) of the Asian Development Bank were the resource persons for the course.

Through lectures and discussions, participants gained a comprehensive understanding of basic definitions and concepts as well as the newly introduced concepts and recommendations made in the 2008 SNA, particularly those relating to the non-financial transactions. Through the course, SIAP equipped the participants with the knowledge needed to identify the additional data needs for implementation of the 2008 SNA and suggested areas for improving the quality and coverage of the national accounts statistics.

The course materials – lecture handouts, group discussion materials, pre-course reading materials and reference materials - were assessed positively by the participants. Almost all the materials were found to be ‘useful’ by all and ‘very useful’ by about a half of the participants. Majority assessed the course as pitched at the right level but over 60 % of the participants found the duration of the course too short.

The course brings together government officials from statistical offices as well as from ministries of communication and information technology, justice, education and immigration and population from ESCAP member and associate member States of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Cook Islands, Georgia, Myanmar, Thailand, Timor-Leste, Uzbekistan, and Viet Nam and the African countries of Ethiopia and Rwanda.

ICTM-3 is a two month training programme designed to improve knowledge and skills for the timely processing of census and survey data and improving the quality and management practices of statistical datasets for effective use and dissemination.  The main subjects of the course include: information architecture of national statistical systems, data capture and processing, statistical databases, data dissemination and micro data access, and data analysis techniques.  The course also demonstrates the use of various statistical software, including CSPRO, STATA, Microdata Management Toolkit, MS Access and DevInfo. Under the supervision of SIAP faculty members, participants will apply their newly acquired and improved knowledge and skills to design and develop a data processing system for a household survey.

The programme also aims to enhance appreciation of Japanese society and culture and understanding of the Japanese statistical system and includes field study trips to a local government statistical office and a retail shop that is a sample outlet for data collection of the Japanese Retail Price Survey.

The workshop presentations and discussions were designed and facilitated by Dr Siu-Ming Tam and Mr Robert Letheby of the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) and with Mr Aloke Kar and Mr Gamini de Silva of SIAP as course convenors. The workshop was designed to increase understanding of s tatisticians on the policy process and getting evidence, especially census data, into policy and to increase understanding of policy makers on how census data is produced, communicated and made accessible to users.

As the culminating activity of the workshop, each country team prepared a plan of action for improving the use of census data for policy purposes. Country-specific challenges were highlighted and several common actions were identified, including legislating through a statistical law; strengthening of coordination among data producers and more dialogue between users and producers; and capacity building through training on more and better policy uses of statistical data.

This regional workshop is the first in a series of four SIAP 2012 capacity-building activities focusing on increasing knowledge and improving requisite skills of statisticians and key data users, particularly development planners and policy-makers, on the use of the 2010 round of population and housing census results in national and sub-national planning and evidence-based policy and decision-making. A web-based course based on training materials from this workshop will also be developed by SIAP. The training courses/workshops are funded by the Asia-Pacific Regional Office of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA-APRO).

The countries representing the Asia-Pacific region during this meeting were Vanuatu and the Philippines. The representative from Vanuatu highlighted the implementation of national coordination mechanisms aimed at improving the monitoring and reporting of MDG indicators, while the representative from the Philippines presented on the political commitment and effective use of data for policy analysis and advocacy.

The meeting helped identify common challenges across regions such as the need to:

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  improve coordination between the data producers and data users
  
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  improve statistical capacity and production of high quality data at the subnational level
  
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  improve metadata
  
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  improve dissemination systems such as websites
  
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  maintain sustainability of the statistical systems
  
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  coordinate activities which will help fill in data gaps
  

The Global Forum on Gender Statistics, which is organized biennially, is part of the Global Gender Statistics Programme promoted by the IAEG-GS with the purpose of enhancing the capacity of countries to collect, disseminate and use quality gender statistics. The focus of the 2012 Global Forum was on women’s empowerment, including economic empowerment, autonomy and physical empowerment, adolescent girls, and knowledge empowerment. The Forum provided an important opportunity to review and discuss new initiatives and data collection tools for the improvement of gender statistics. Representatives of national statistical systems presented national experiences and best practices on how to collect gender empowerment statistics and their uses in policy making. International agencies and the United Nations Regional Commissions shared information on initiatives being undertaken to assist countries in the production and analysis of gender statistics.

The sixth meeting of the Inter-Agency and Expert Group on Gender Statistics (IAEG-GS) reviewed the work and work modalities of its three advisory groups on: gender statistics training activities and curricula; emerging issues; and global gender statistics and indicators databases. The availability of training materials, manuals and handbooks for use by national statisticians has been a key concern in developing and improving gender statistics. The United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD), in consultation with the IAEG-GS, is in the process of developing a Gender Statistics Manual with the primary objective of encouraging gender mainstreaming in the production of official statistics. A set of Guidelines for Producing Statistics on Violence against Women (VAW) are also being developed by UNSD, which will provide detailed methodological advice on special features of VAW surveys, what and how to measure, and other relevant issues that national statistical organizations should take into consideration in designing and conducting statistical surveys on VAW.

The meeting also reviewed the minimum set of gender indicators developed by the IAEG-GS following recommendations by the United Nations Statistical Commission. The minimum set of gender indicators provides a basis to promote the production and compilation of gender statistics at the national level and is also a basis for international data compilation. The list includes indicators addressing key issues in gender equality and women’s empowerment that are common across countries and regions. Indicators specific to regional and national contexts will be added by regional and national entities. Data production, compilation, methodological work on the indicators will be facilitated by international agencies and the United Nations Regional Commissions.

As part of the follow-up actions to decisions made by the 42nd Session of the United Nations Statistical Commission, a Global Review of Gender Statistics was coordinated by UNSD in collaboration with the United Nations Regional Commissions earlier this year, through a questionnaire developed by a sub-group of the IAEG-GS. The objectives of the survey were to review gender statistics in national statistical systems; obtain information on how gender perspectives are mainstreamed into national statistical systems; and to gather information to help identify good practices and challenges to integrate gender into the production and use of statistics.

The preliminary results of the Global Review, presented by the United Nations Regional Commissions at this meeting, indicated that there are wide variations among countries in each of the regions, implying different levels of progress in gender statistics. Though the overall importance of gender statistics was appreciated by most countries that responded to the survey, challenges exist on issues such as institutional structures and national coordination mechanisms for gender statistics. It was emphasized that institutionalization, development and implementation of legal frameworks, and a high level commitment would be key for mainstreaming gender statistics in statistical systems. The results of the Global Review will be submitted to the 2013 session of the United Nations Statistical Commission. The results will also be used by the United Nations Regional Commissions in the development of their respective regional programmes and capacity building initiatives related to gender statistics.

Further information about the fourth Global Forum on Gender Statistics can be obtained athttp://unstats.un.org/unsd/gender/Jordan_Mar2012/Default_Jordan_2012.html

Current proposals for the review and update of the international standards were presented by ILO representatives at the meeting. Participants were encouraged to provide feedback on the proposed draft revisions, and discussion was encouraged to generate new ideas and further refinements.

The outcome of this review process, an updated draft statistical standard, will be presented for discussion and possible adoption at the 19th ICLS in 2013.

The workshop was organized to discuss processes that will be undertaken in developing a country action plan for improving agricultural and rural statistics for food security; to understand how the Global Strategy for Improving Agricultural and Rural Statistics can be applied in developing the national objectives and approach; to learn about various resources that are available for improving agricultural and rural statistics; and to contribute towards the development of the regional implementation plan.

The objective of the meeting was to develop a logical framework for the implementation (in Asia-Pacific) of the Global Strategy to Improve Agricultural and Rural Statistics. The meeting also discussed and agreed on stakeholders who should be involved in the implementation.

The logical framework, which is now being finalized together with the regional implementation plan, focuses on results (impact, outcome, outputs) on all three components of the regional implementation plan, namely technical assistance, training, and research.

The 2012 UNFPA-SPC Regional Workshop Reviewing the 2010 Round of Population and Housing Censuses in the Pacific held from 21-25 May 2012 in Noumea brought together census managers and heads of Pacific national statistical offices to discuss good practices and lessons learned from the 2010 census round. The workshop highlighted the need for early census planning and how sharing knowledge across countries (South-South cooperation) can improve the quality and efficiency of census operations.

Immediately following the census review, representatives from the Pacific Ministries of Agriculture joined the national statistical office representatives at the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO)/ The Partnership in Statistics for Development in the 21st Century (PARIS21)/ United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA)/ SPC Regional Workshop on Integrating Agricultural Questions with 2020 Round of Population and Housing Censuses held from 28 May 28 – 1 June 2012 in Noumea. The practice of coordinating population and housing with agriculture censuses has been recommended by the FAO World Programme for the Census of Agriculture 2010 (WCA 2010) and by the UNFPA in line with the Principles and Recommendations for Population and Housing Censuses for the 2010 round. This workshop provided practical guidance on best practices for carrying out coordinated and linked censuses. Linked censuses have many advantages including a wider range of analysis for policy-making, cost effective censuses and improved bases for statistical data collections.

These initiatives in the Pacific are relevant for and link up with the ongoing ADB-FAO-ESCAP collaborative initiative to improve agricultural statistics in Asia and the Pacific, in accordance with the Global Strategy to Improve Agricultural and Rural Statistics. One of the major recommendations of the strategy is to integrate agricultural statistical systems into national statistical systems through, among others, coordinating population and housing with agriculture censuses.

More detailed information on the Pacific workshops can be found on the SPC Statistics Development Programme website: http://www.spc.int/sdp/

Aside from providing concrete inputs to further refine a draft core set of social statistics that was produced following the first meeting of the TAG in September 2011, national and international expert members of the TAG also discussed and agreed on a phased approach to take the work forward. In the first phase (short-term or from now to the third session of the Committee on Statistics), the TAG will develop guidelines for country and international consultations and carry out consultations in countries on the relevance of the draft core set. The TAG will also carry out consultations with international organizations on the coverage of the core set. The draft core set that will have reflected the results of these consultations will be submitted for endorsement by the Committee on Statistics at its third session in December 2012.

In the second phase (medium-term, or the period between and third and fourth sessions of the Committee on Statistics), the core set will be used as a guide to understand the status of social statistics in the region and gaps in national capacity across member States. This understanding will form the basis for developing and implementing a strategy to address the capacity gaps and improve social statistics in the region.

The development of such a reference framework was selected as a high priority by the High-Level Group for Strategic Developments in Business Architecture in Statistics (HLG-BAS) overseeing the work of the international statistical community on the modernization of official statistics. To accelerate the development of the framework, HLG-BAS is organizing a series of intensive two-week meetings (named sprint meetings).

This second sprint session in April 2012, following on a first meeting in Ljubljana in February 2012, gathered methodologists, IT and metadata specialists mostly from a number of national statistical offices from European countries. Working through small-group discussions to identify and define components of the framework, the meeting developed an intermediate version of the model (version 0.4). The work from the meeting and a roadmap to finalize a first publishable version of GSIM was presented through teleconference to the HLG-BAS on the last day of the meeting. One or two additional sprint meetings will be organized in 2012 with the aim of publishing a first final version (GSIM version 1.0) of the framework by the end of the year.

The workshop brought together information technology specialists as well as customer services/information centers from national statistical offices from Australia, Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, Fiji, India, Indonesia, Iran, Kazakhstan,  Lao PDR, Malaysia, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nepal, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Viet Nam. A few selected countries from outside the Asia-Pacific region also took part in the meeting. The discussions focused largely on web dissemination as the internet became the main channel for national statistical offices to disseminate their data products. The workshop offered the occasion to discover a number of innovative data visualization tools. Importantly a number of countries noted the changing user demand brought by the internet. Notably there is a widening range of data users of official statistics and increasing demand for detailed (metadata rich) datasets that can be coherently combined by data users to generate their own derived statistical information. One session was also dedicated to the emerging issue of integrating statistical and geospatial information as a way to better communicate to data users the geographical dimension in statistical datasets.