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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Historical context
Rationale and specific experiences of the projects
Indicators of success
Lessons learnt
Implications for the SADC Project
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How did development accounts projects start?
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Began with the CARICOM project (1999-2001)
Was followed by:
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Association of South-Eastern Asian Nations (ASEAN)
(2000-2003)
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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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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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As a technical assistance activity, projects are designed to introduce practical dimensions to the regular programme of UNSD, which primarily involves:
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Developing methodological materials, including standards in concepts, definitions, and classifications,
Compilation and dissemination of statistics
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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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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:
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Taking advantage of differences in levels of statistical development and capacities to promote south-south cooperation internally, and with other regional groupings
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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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CARICOM
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Strengthening Capacity in the Compilation of
Statistics and Indicators for Conference
Follow-up in the CARICOM Region (1999-2001)
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Fifteen countries
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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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Statistical co-ordination
Communication between statistics producing institutions
Social and gender statistics
Environment statistics
Information technology: infrastructure and computer skills
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Two regional reports on
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Social and gender
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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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ASEAN
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Strengthening Regional Capacities for
Statistical Development in South East
Asia (2000-2003)
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Ten countries
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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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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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Production of the publication “ASEAN IN
FIGURES”
Development of software on inputoutput 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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ESCWA
Strengthening Statistical Capacity in the
Region of the Economic and Social
Commission for Western Asia (2002-2004)
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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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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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Management of statistical operations
Dissemination and marketing of official statistics
Population and housing census
Environment statistics
Disability statistics
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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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ECOWAS
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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
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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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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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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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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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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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Real success of these projects lies in the enduring changes beyond project span
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CARICOM – Introduction of a social and environment component into its Statistics Subprogramme
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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Maximizing 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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SADC
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Strengthening statistical capacity-building in support of the Millennium Development
Goals in the Southern African Development
Community (SADC) region (2006-2009)
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Fifteen countries
Details of the project to be given in another presentation
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