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

1. 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

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

3. 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)

4. 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

5. 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

6. 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

7. 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

8. 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.

9. Priority areas (CARICOM) • Statistical co-ordination • Communication between statistics producing institutions • Social and gender statistics • Environment statistics • Information technology: infrastructure and computer skills

10. 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

11. Specific Project experiences (2)ASEAN • Strengthening Regional Capacities for Statistical Development in South East Asia (2000-2003) • Ten countries

12. Main objectives (ASEAN) • Strengthening national statistical systems in the tenASEAN countries • Strengthening the intra-regional co-operation amongthe ten statistical systemsand, reinforce existing south/south networks • Strengthening the statistical capacity of theASEAN 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

13. 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

14. 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

15. 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

16. 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

17. Priority areas of focus (ESCWA) • Management of statistical operations • Dissemination and marketing of official statistics • Population and housing census • Environment statistics • Disability statistics

18. 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)

19. 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

20. 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)

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

22. 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

23. 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

24. 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

25. 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

26. 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

27. Thank You