Advancing statistics
for development
Strategic Advisory Body on Modernization of
Statistical Production and Services for Asia and
the Pacific (SAB-AP)
Second meeting
16 July 2014, Bangkok
Marko Javorsek
ESCAP Statistics Division
Structure of the presentation
• Regional governance structure for the
modernization of statistical production and
services
• Regional initiatives and activities
• Expected outcomes of the meeting
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Committee on Statistics
• Second session (2010) the Committee adopts two
overarching, strategic goals:
– Ensuring that all countries in the region by 2020 have the
capability to provide an agreed basic range of population,
economic, social and environmental statistics.
– Creating a more adaptive and cost-effective information
management environment for national statistical offices through
stronger collaboration.
• Third session (2012) the Committee decides to establish:
– High-level strategic body
– Network of experts
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SAB-AP
• Terms of Reference adopted by the Bureau in
May 2013
• Call for nomination sent out in May 2013
• Seven nominations were received (Australia,
India, Malaysia, Pakistan, Republic of Korea,
Samoa, Viet Nam)
• The Bureau accepted all nominations and
appointed the member from Australia as the
chair of the Body
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SAB-AP (cont’d)
• First meeting of the Body was held in November
2013 in Japan, where the SAB-AP:
– Drafted a 2014 work programme
– Proposed the establishment of a modernization
working group
– Welcomed the ADB/ESCAP SDMX initiative and
supported the project objectives
– Reminded of the need for a strong support of national
statistical offices at the highest level of management
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Key responsibilities
• The primary objective:
“to drive and support changes towards the modernization
of statistical production and services in Asia-Pacific”
• The Body shall be responsible for:
– Developing a regional strategy
– Mobilizing financial and human resources
– Acting as a regional voice
– Providing strategic directions to and overseeing the
programme of work of the network of experts
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Terms of Reference
• Five heads of National Statistical Offices
• Balanced representation, geographically and
across developed and developing national
statistical systems
• Include a regional member of the global HLG
• Appointed for a period of two years
• SAB-AB shall establish a yearly programme of
work setting priority areas and related activities
• Report to the Bureau of the Committee on
Statistics and the Committee itself
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past regional activities
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Past ESCAP events on modernization
• Side event to the Committee on Statistics, Second
session – Modernizing statistical information systems,
Bangkok 2010
• Expert Group Meeting: Opportunities and advantages of
enhanced collaboration on statistical information
management in Asia and the Pacific, Bangkok 2011
• SIAP Management Seminar 2011 – Shifting from “stovepipe” data producer to “information service” provider
• Practical advisory workshop: Supporting effective use of
information and communication technology in population
census operations, Moscow 2012
– GSBPM & SDMX
• Joint meetings on the Modernization of Statistical
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Information Systems (MSIS) 2013 & 2014
MSIS 2013 & 2014
• Collaboration between UNECE, OECD, Eurostat
and ESCAP
• 23-25 April 2013, 2 venues joined by web link:
– Paris – hosted by OECD
– Bangkok – hosted by ESCAP
• 14-16 April 2014, 2 venues joined by web link:
– Dublin – hosted by CSO, Ireland
– Manila – hosted by ADB
• Joint sessions were held in Asia-Pacific
afternoon and Europe morning time
• Provided recommendations about work on
modernization in Asia-Pacific
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Outcomes of the MSIS 2013 (Bangkok)
• Participants recommended that
– the work of the expert community centre around key priority
areas; and
– interested practitioners and experts to gather in smaller working
groups.
• Key priority areas identified by the participants:
– Strengthening national statistical systems (coordination,
information flow in decentralized systems, etc.)
– Generic Standard Business Process Model (GSBPM)
– Statistical Data and Metadata Exchange (SDMX)
– e-collection
– Data dissemination
– Big data
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Schematic depiction of the HLG, SAB-AP and working groups as
suggested by MSIS 2013 participants
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Outcomes of the MSIS 2014 (Manila)
• Participants recommended:
– That intensified regional collaboration is needed
– To organize work in smaller, focused and technical
working groups on clearly identified priority areas
– That working groups need to be formalized
– That NSOs management needs to give the necessary
attention to this area of work
– That regional and international organizations were
best placed to coordinate and facilitate the
establishment and the work of these groups
– Priority areas to be: big data, SDMX, e-collection,
data dissemination and visualization
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ADB/ESCAP SDMX
Capacity Building Initiative
• Direct outcome from MSIS 2013
• The primary focus of the project is to promote the use of
SDMX among national statistical systems in the region
and build regional capacities in applying SDMX
• The project is focusing on:
– Mapping of DSDs for data exchange (reuse global DSDs);
– Capacity building on using tools to support automated data
exchange (e.g. Eurostat SDMX-RI, IMF Open Data
Platform).
• The pilot phase involves 4 countries: Australia, Malaysia,
New Zealand, and Thailand
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ADB/ESCAP SDMX
Capacity Building Initiative (cont’d)
• Focus on economic statistics indicators (ADB Key
Indicators), limited to NA or BoP in the first stage (due to
the recent adoption of the global DSDs)
• Take into account specific needs of other international
organizations (e.g. OECD, IMF, UNSD, WB, etc.)
• Current status of the project
– Difficulty to operationalize global DSDs and tools (SDMX-RI)
– Project delayed due to staff change at ADB
• Question to consider: How should the initiative be placed
under the auspices of SAB-AP?
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Modernization wiki
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expected outcomes of the meeting
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Outcome of the meeting
The SAB-AP at its second meeting shall
agree on:
• Strategy of SAB-AP
• Work programme for 2014-16 of SAB-AP
• Outline of the SAB-AP report to the Committee
on Statistics
• Regional priority areas for the work on
modernization of statistical production and
services
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Future activities
• Global Conference on Big Data for Official Statistics,
28-31 October 2014, China
– Should SAB-AP represent countries from Asia-Pacific at
the conference?
– Should SAB-AP get involved in the work of the global
working group?
• Meeting of the Expert Group on Statistical Data and
Metadata Exchange, 27-30 October 2014, Republic
of Korea
– How should the region be represented at the meeting?
– How can SAB-AP get involved in the meeting?
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Future activities (cont’d)
• Side-event on “The use of big data for official
statistics in Asia-Pacific” to the Committee on
Statistics, 19 December 2014, Bangkok
– Is the topic of big data for the side-event interesting?
– How can SAB-AP contribute to the debate?
– What should be the focus of the side-event, e.g. the
dialogue with private sector?
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