First Steering Committee Meeting on SADC Project Durban, 14 July 2006

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First Steering Committee Meeting on SADC Project
Durban, 14 July 2006

• Experiences with United Nations Development
  Accounts Statistics Projects
•  
•  
• Lessons from UNSD Executed Projects
• Grace Bediako
• United Nations Statistics Division

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Outline

• Historical context
• Rationale and specific experiences of the
  projects
• Indicators of success
• Lessons learnt
• Implications for the SADC Project

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Historical Context (1)How did development
accounts projects start?

• Began with the CARICOM project (1999-2001)
• Was followed by
• Association of South-Eastern Asian Nations
  (ASEAN) (2000-2003)
• Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia
  (UN ESCWA) (2002-2004)
• Economic Community of West African States
  (ECOWAS) (2004-2006)
• SADC project, now starting, is the fifth project
  that UNSD is executing (2006-2009)

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Historical Context (2)

• Projects fall within the UNSD Technical
  assistance programme but does not define the
  beginning of UNSD technical assistance
• UNSD has a component of its regular budget for
  technical assistance activities, such as
  workshops, expert group meetings, technical
  advisory missions, study tours etc.
• By taking the project approach, the assistance
  has become more holistic and allows for more
  systematic and results oriented interventions
• All with positive and enduring outcomes

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Rationale for these projects

• As a technical assistance activity, projects are
  designed to introduce practical dimensions to the
  regular programme of UNSD, which primarily
  involves
• Developing methodological materials, including
  standards in concepts, definitions, and
  classifications,
• Compilation and dissemination of statistics
• Review of national practices in various aspects
  of statistics production
• By these projects UNSD works with countries
  through regional groups to bridge capacity gaps

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Rationale for projects (2)

• Provide financial resources, which serves as a
  catalyst to strengthen the regional institution,
  in its statistical coordination role and
  promotion of statistical development.
• Strategies involve
• Taking advantage of differences in levels of
  statistical development and capacities to promote
  south-south cooperation internally, and with
  other regional groupings
• Building on the cohesion among countries in the
  economic communities,
• Bridging critical resource gap at the regional
  level/economic community, for a selection of
  activities

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Specific Project experiences (1)CARICOM

• Strengthening Capacity in the Compilation of
  Statistics and Indicators for Conference
  Follow-up in the CARICOM Region (1999-2001)
• Fifteen countries

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Main objectives

• To strengthen co-operation among national
  statistical systems
• To develop a critical mass of statisticians in
  the CARICOM region
• To improve the ability of national institutions
  to produce and disseminate relevant statistics on
  environment, social and gender concerns routinely
  
• To strengthen regional capability to produce
  analytical reports on the state of the
  environment, social and gender concerns.

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Priority areas (CARICOM)

• Statistical co-ordination
• Communication between statistics producing
  institutions
• Social and gender statistics
• Environment statistics
• Information technology infrastructure and
  computer skills

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Successes (CARICOM)

• Two regional reports on
• Social and gender
• Environment
• Social, gender and environment statistics placed
  on the agenda of Standing Committee of Caribbean
  Statisticians (SCCS)
• An advisory committee (sub-committee of SCCS)
  established to guide the development of on
  social, gender and environment
• Project activities integrated into regular
  programme of the CARICOM Secretariat

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Specific Project experiences (2)ASEAN

• Strengthening Regional Capacities for Statistical
  Development in South East Asia (2000-2003)
• Ten countries

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Main objectives (ASEAN)

• Strengthening national statistical systems in the
  ten ASEAN countries
• Strengthening the intra-regional co-operation
  among the ten statistical systems and, reinforce
  existing south/south networks
• Strengthening the statistical capacity of the
  ASEAN Secretariat, to draw on national data
  systems and to produce analytical reports on
  major economic and social issues
• Improve data exchange and dissemination in the
  region, through technology upgrades

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Priority areas (ASEAN)

• National and satellite accounting through the
  implementation of relevant provisions of the 1993
  System of National Accounts
• Harmonization of development indicators for the
  ASEAN countries
• Statistical organization and management
• Information technology for statistics

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Successes (ASEAN)

• Production of the publication ASEAN IN FIGURES
• Development of software on input-output
  compilation
• Compilation of good practices in organization and
  management of statistical systems
• Establishment of a statistical unit at the ASEAN
  Secretariat

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Specific Project experiences (3)ESCWA

• Strengthening Statistical Capacity in the Region
  of the Economic and Social Commission for Western
  Asia (2002-2004)
• Thirteen countries
• Main objective
• to build a statistical network to play a
  catalytic role in improving the production and
  dissemination of statistics and indicators in the
  ESCWA region

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The Role of the Network

• Improve the organization of the countries
  statistical systems and strengthen the capacity
  of the countries to disseminate their data
• Strengthen the capacity of the countries to
  routinely produce statistical data
• Develop common methodological approaches for data
  collection, processing, and dissemination in area
  of environmental, social and demographic
  statistics
• Strengthen the capacity of ESCWA Statistics
  Division in regional coordination

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Priority areas of focus (ESCWA)

•   Management of statistical operations
• Dissemination and marketing of official
  statistics
• Population and housing census
• Environment statistics
• Disability statistics

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Successes (ESCWA)

• Steering committee of Directors of Statistics set
  up
• Focus on Population and housing census beneficial
  to most countries
• Testing of handheld devises in a national census
  (Oman)
• Development and testing of software for
  application in Optical and Intelligent Character
  Recognition (OICR) for Arabic characters in
  population censuses (Egypt)

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Specific Project experiences (4)ECOWAS

• Strengthening statistical capacity-building in
  support of the Millennium Development Goals in
  the region of the Economic Community of West
  African States (ECOWAS) 2004-2006
• Fifteen countries
• The overall goal of the project is to strengthen
  national statistical systems in the ECOWAS region
  to enable them to meet their statistical needs
  and to improve the availability and quality of
  data required to develop and compile the
  millennium indicator list for the MDGs

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Priority areas

• Statistical activities planning, data analysis
  and dissemination
• Statistical organization and user-producer
  relations
• Poverty statistics
• National accounts
• Energy and environment statistics
• Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)
• Information and Communication Technology (ICT)

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Successes

• Steering committee of Directors of Statistics set
  up
• Project activities integrated into strategic plan
  of ECOWAS
• Publication on poverty measurement under
  preparation

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Lessons from Past Projects (1)

• The use of the steering committee (of heads of
  statistics) ensured the continued relevance of
  project goals, focus and activities
• Heads of Statistics played critical role in the
  development and implementation of the projects,
  and thus in their success
• Form of the projects the same, but focus areas
  varied according to regional and national needs
• Regional and national statistical offices
  committed resources, in terms of time and effort
  of their staff, hosting of project meeting and
  study tours, provision of technical expertise
• Leadership of regional secretariat a necessity

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Lessons learnt (2)Common grounds

• Heads of statistics directing the affairs of the
  project
• Regional Secretariat institutionalize key
  elements of project goals and objectives
• Networking with south-south cooperation enhanced
• Resources, especially for ICT enhancement and
  study tours, allocated according to need
• Compilation and dissemination of indicators
  (publication) one of the key outputs
• At least one significant milestone

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Specific achievements

• Real success of these projects lies in the
  enduring changes beyond project span
• CARICOM Introduction of a social and
  environment component into its Statistics
  Sub-programme
• ASEAN Establishment of the Statistics Unit at
  its Secretariat
• ESCWA Development of software for use of IT,
  i.e., Optical character recognition and hand held
  devices technologies in census- taking
• ECOWAS Institutionalizing the meetings of Heads
  of Statistics

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Implications for SADC ProjectMaximizing benefits
and impact

• Identify one important goal that can have long
  lasting impact
• Ensure synergies with ongoing and planned
  activities (such as use of existing meetings of
  heads of statistics)
• Make it worthwhile by focusing on critical gaps
• Commit time and human resources, at national and
  regional levels, to participate in activities and
  contribute
• SADC Secretariat has a big responsibility for its
  success

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Specific Project experiences (5)SADC

• Strengthening statistical capacity-building in
  support of the Millennium Development Goals in
  the Southern African Development Community (SADC)
  region (2006-2009)
• Fifteen countries
• Details of the project to be given in another
  presentation

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Thank You