United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs/
Statistics Division (UNSD)
Strengthening national statistical
infrastructure.
Regional Workshop for African Countries on the Compilation of
Basic Economic Statistics
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia,
16 – 19 October 2007
Len Cook, UNSD Consultant
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Vision -
Forum on Africa Statistical Development
“Our vision…………..
• as core producers of statistics in Africa
• is the installation of a statistical infrastructure,
• through enhanced partner-ship among stakeholders
at all levels,
• capable of providing and promoting the effective
management and utilization of quality data, and
• information for evidence-based policy and decisionmaking,
• monitoring development programmes and
• democratic accountability.”
Statistical Development in Africa: A Strategic framework
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Infrastructure – A sound balance
• The national statistical infrastructure
contains of a mix of institutions, institutional
relationships, systems, processes practices
and methods.
• Having a balanced approach to
infrastructure development may be more
important for the long run success of the
statistical system than significant
achievement at any single one element.
• the way the whole range of infrastructure fits
together and meets country needs will be
unique to the country
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Local context of statistical infrastructure
Place statistical infrastructure of any
country in the wider context of the
infrastructure that exists for all
business and the other activities of
government.
- Tangible, (transport and communications
systems)
- Less tangible (common tax numbers,
tracking
goods, services or people as they enter the
country. )
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Core capabilities of National Statistics
Fundamental
Pillars of Official Statistics
T
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T
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R
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T
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NSI FOCUSED CAPABILITIES
Statistical Legislation
Statistical Standards
Statistical Frameworks
Training
Knowledge of methodologies
International co-operation
Statistical Organisation
R
E
L
E
V
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N
C
E
STATISTICAL SYSTEM
FOCUSED CAPABILITIES
E
X
P
E
R
T
P
E
R
F
O
R
M
A
N
C
E
GLOBAL NETWORKS
Privacy Legislation
Code of Practice
UN Principles of Official Statistics
Advisory Bodies
UNSNA
National Information Policy
Beijing (Women)
Regional Collaboration
Rio (Environment)
Information Technology
IMF SDDS
Market Infrastructures
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Accreditation of quality
Implications for transfer of systems and processes
Translating survey design methods
adopted by well endowed countries
into countries that are less well
endowed with business or government
infrastructure may bring about
suboptimal solutions which are less
effective than those which take
account of what infrastructure works
best in the local or regional context.
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User driven focus on infrastructure
1. The national statistician is an investor, while existing
and future users are consumers
2. Leadership in national statistical policy within the
country must focus on enabling decisions based on
sound statistical measures to be made in a timely and
decisive manner.
3. Strong user relationships and interaction are essential
to give the national leadership a clear focus on
strategies that meet local needs, alongside Millennium
Development Goals, the national accounts and other
international needs.
4. Anticipate emerging needs e.g. expectations of
integration between social and economic statistics
5. Manage obsolescence of systems, methods and
processes
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Tensions that have to be managed in the plan
• Build investments from interest in end results
• Fit long term commitments into an annual
finance systems
• Main uses not focus of main users
• Systems and integration beyond single project
funds
• Just-discovered needs can overturn plans
• Maximise application of infrastructure
• Extend statistical outputs to get value for money,
UNSD/ECWA Workshop on strategic planning
Addis Ababa 29 August 2006
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performance
Opportunity and risk management
Seeking
opportunities
Strategy
(staging)
Manage risks
Dung heap
time
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Examples of contingencies that are not usually
included in the plan.
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early work on future projects,
responding to major errors,
planning mistakes,
events that were not expected (foot and mouth),
failure of others, or of systems (Royal Mail, helpline),
international projects,
major policy review needs (RCSP, Todd),
response rate problems (UK census, gambling survey),
delays in IT developments (NZ CPI),
problems in reconciling new statistics (UK census, UK
employment statistics, UK population estimates),
• consultation delays (RPI in UK),
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Infrastructure depends on
Governance
(Organisational and constitutional)
– Statistics legislation, in the context of other laws (privacy,
freedom of information, administrative)
– Procedure, custom and practice, in applying law
– Organisational arrangements and roles
– Organisation of the national statistical office
– Ministerial arrangements and status, and delineation of roles
– Place within the organisation of government of the statistical
office and the national statistician
– Other decision-making authorities
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Elements of Governance
(practice)
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–
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–
–
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Capacity for independent action
Quality of leadership
Professionalism of statistical staff
National statistical standards and frameworks
Budget allocation and management
Forms of compliance and accountability
Public sector management environment
Role of management boards, statistical councils
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Elements of Governance
(practice)
– Users are not investors, and it is the national statistician who
invests in methodology, systems, publishing services, survey
capability, skills and identity needed to produce official
statistics
– Quality of leadership
– Professionalism of statistical staff
– National statistical standards and frameworks
– Budget allocation and management
– Forms of compliance and accountability
– Public sector management environment
– Role of management boards, statistical councils
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Governance Now
(institutional preferences)
• Networked organisation form
• Re-enforce standards with common tools and cross-office
architecture
• Ongoing common training and development process
• High quality, responsive central services
• Statistical system responses to emerging issues
• Loose oversight of influential activity that integrates with official
statistics
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Local partnerships may speed change
and increase opportunities
1. Partners in collaboration in systems and methods
that challenge the transfer of practices from
unrelated countries will come from country
organisations that have similar interests in
information exchange and transfer, although their
field of interest may be very different.
2. Because the payback period for statistical
investments is comparatively long compared to
many other fields of activity, technological
innovation of local relevance in other agencies may
have an even greater impact on the collection,
analysis and release of statistics.
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Fit development path to long run
budget
1. Some elements of infrastructure will be
determined by the economic position of the
country.
2. For example, there is now a rich array of
freeware for information technology, which
embraces the uses that statistical systems
have for information technology.
3. This means that technology resources can
be directed at applications rather than
software purchase and fees.
4. Donor activity can be required to adopt the
NSI standard tools
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Development path for NSI Planning
Anticipate change in
direction of statistical
sources and statistical
measures
High
Continuity of
Government
Funding
to
NSI
Capacity to change
the scope and
quality of statistics
low
Capacity to repeat
annual and monthly
operations
Low
----
Capacity to
extend
statistical
activities and
maintain
regular
activity
User commitment ----
high
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Contribution of investments to
performance
Presentation and
extraction tools
Methods and
survey tools
Competitiveness, Innovation,
Responsiveness
Best practice, Reliability
Cycle times, Cost structure,
Integration
Meta
data
Coherence, Knowledge base,
Geographic base
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Managing obsolescence in statistical
Development
process
project scale
18 months
15 months
One year
Meta
data
9 months
Methods and
survey tools
6 months
Presentation and
extraction tools
3 months
Investment Life-span
Competitiveness
Innovation
Responsiveness
Best practice
Reliability
Cycle times
Cost structure
Integration
Coherence
Knowledge base
Geographic base
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Integrating elements
INTEGRATION
THROUGH
COMMON
METHODOLOGY
AND
PRACTICE
MATCHING
BY COMMON
STATISTICAL
SURVEY
FRAMES, AND
IDENTIFIERS
COMMON
QUALITY
MEASURES
FOR
SURVEY
EVENTS
COMMON
ORGANISATION
OF DATA
ARRAYS
REAL TIME SURVEY PROCESS INFORMATION
REAL-TIME
PROCESSES OF
STATISTICAL
FRAMEWORKS
& SYSTEMS
REPLACEABLE
COMMON TOOLS, AND SYSTEMS
COMMON DATA MANAGEMENT (ORACLE)
USERS DETERMINE WHOLE SYSTEM
CROSS CUTTING VARIABLES
META DATA
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Survey design and statistical infrastructure reflect the
local context
1. Simple survey designs and estimation methods
bring added flexibility but may require larger
sample sizes
2. Household surveys have an increasing place in
economic statistics, initially through extending
the scope of well established sources
3. When available, tax records can be used not
only to manage the survey frame through a
business register, but to provide responses for
small firms.
4. Area samples, sampling transactions,
combining information may be more efficient
with current tools, where registers are poor
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Collaboration among African countries may enable
more rapid development of the most relevant
methodologies, (maintain a core of local expertise).
Graphical methods of validation can enable
outliers to be managed with greater certainty
than traditional methods that necessitate
ongoing oversight by changing personal.
Bring together the validation and linking of the
business activity of large enterprises at a micro
level, to improve the quality of balance of
payments, finance and banking, pensions
statistics.
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Making good use of available information technology - 1
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Development path fits long term finance
Transformation of technology base
Need consistency of all forms of support
Establish common donor expectations.
Have long term strategy to replace
obsolete systems.
• Take longer if needed
• Large systems for efficiency gains, small
systems for convincing stakeholders
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Making good use of available information technology -2
• Select just a few tools
• Statistical standards can be constrained by
technical choices
• Systems now need less rigid meta data ,
• IT change needs management, processes,
training, and statistical priorities.
• Statistical projects strengthen methodology
• Need standard practices and strong oversight
• Managing obsolescence of methods and
systems
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Focusing on an Integrated,
enterprise wide technology
architecture
•Common tool box
•Systems and methods interaction (External trade)
•Web driven
•International collaboration
•Technology is a boardroom issue
•Start simply
•Change psychology of organisation
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Essential challenges: Clear authority for
the place of the statistical system
• Have final authority for integrity with statisticians
• Fund mix of current activity and investments
• Make quality visible
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Organisational infrastructure
Clear authority for the
place of the statistical
system
Capacity to organise a
long run program of
activity
•
Give final authority to statisticians for
consistent actions on matters of integrity in
statistical practice
•
Commitment to funding of a mix of current
activity and investment to bring later benefits
Make visible the quality of key statistics
Competence includes corporate management
Infrastructure as central focus of investment,
and of performance benchmarks
Match the resources for statistics with groups
of statistics and statistical developments
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•
•
•
Ways of Keeping
relevant
•
Engage with users and the uses made of the
statistics
Shared Commitment
•
Consistent reinforcement of integrity in
statistical practice
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Ways of Keeping relevant
Institutionalised processes
Expert user involvement
International expertise of professional
statisticians
Understand the policy of government
Continuous improvement
• Quality, obsolescence, uniqueness of role (trust,
research, community understanding, survey
design and operation)
UNSD/ECWA Workshop on strategic planning
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Ways of organising key relationships
Key relationships - Ministers, major
users, professionals, community
leaders, teachers, respondents,
researchers
• Get commitment to the plan
• Get whole organization with common
understanding of change
• Account management at top level
• Strong knowledge management capability
UNSD/ECWA Workshop on strategic planning
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Decision-making in economic
statistics
Global accumulation of knowledge of decisions and
s/understanding needed in societies
National accumulation of knowledge
Statistical Frameworks national/international
Statistical processes
Statistical methods
Statistical practice
Surveying
Statistical measures
Country decisions/ understanding
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Investment level and Performance
System
Performance
System focused contribution
Institution focused contribution
Pacific Africa Balkans
East Europe
France
United Kingdom
Italy
Australia
Canada
Norway
Investment Level
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Costs of inadequate investment in
statistical leadership
• Development risks are seen as procurement risks instead of
statistical ones
• Ignore dynamics of statistical processes and over-emphasis on oneoff static performance
• Synchronous activity and balances across the whole system not
reflected in design goals
• Absence of a compelling agenda for donor countries to participate
and contribute
• Low focus on learning and development activities that expand
capacity from joint development and top level interaction
• Infrastructure is not a stable platform for necessary dynamic of
responses to emerging needs
• The piecemeal evolution of statistical processes means that the
investment resources have a reduced impact on the long term
performance of the statistical system
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The management focus on change
No risk access
Simplify survey base
Link with oversight body
Contact management
Explain uses to respondents
trust
and
goodwill
of
respondents
Survey
capability
Manage
Statistical
Processes
Standard products
Market priorities
Small areas
Delivery standards
Delivery monitoring
Audit reviews
National Statistics reviews
Standard frames
Single geographic
reference
System wide meta data
Standard survey design
Information
management
Reporting on trends
Demography capability
Delivery
Analysis
User
Risk management
Value analysis
Strategic reviews
management
Competitive advantage of whole statistical system
Understand
Value
added
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The special role of a successful strategic plan
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•
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Provides authority for the mix of activity
Matches resources to capacity
Statistical system is kept relevant
Shared understanding and commitment
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Results of Improved Methodology
and Technology
Description
Access to new administrative data-sets
Apply classifications in more detail, at low cost
Rapid digitising of information
New monitoring of business transactions (SWIFT)
Strategic view of frame management
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Results of Improved Methodology
and Technology
Extraction
Transfer information fast
Flexible access to existing data-sets
Graphical validation processes
Total quality management processes
Apply complex sampling models
Recognise outliers
Apply common tools
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Results of Improved Methodology
and Technology
Integration
Increased capacity to adopt common identifiers
Apply statistical frames to all data-sets
Match data-sets with common identifiers
Extend analysis from existing panel data-sets
Apply statistical matching
Apply statistical unit classifications to event data
Use power of data management tools
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Results of Improved Methodology
and Technology
Estimation
Apply user specified models to data-sets
Estimate sub-population characteristics
Provide micro-data based measures
(concentration, distribution, transitions)
Greater validation of estimates
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Results of Improved Methodology
and Technology
Selection
Expand variety of relevant comparisons
Increase small population measures
Provide micro-macro data integration
Regionally specific regional data selection
Data defined regions
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