The Conference of European Statisticians (CES) plays an important role in
addressing the issues and problems that arise in official statistics and the
challenges that lie ahead for national and international statistical agencies.
Given the many international organizations, it is an ongoing challenge for
the CES and the UNECE Statistical Division to coordinate the international
statistical activities in the region. The CES and its Bureau deal
with matters of coordination on a continuous basis by:
• Reviewing in-depth the most topical statistical areas;
• Identifying
gaps and duplication in ongoing work; and
• Looking for emerging issues
not yet addressed.
As a result of the long tradition of working together, the division of labour
among international organizations active in statistics in the UNECE region
is well established, and the CES provides the mechanism to resolve problems
on an ongoing basis in an efficient way. Recently, the CES and its Bureau
decided to focus the attention of the CES on the strategic issues ahead in
the coming years, rather than discussing only current issues and problems.
The CES seminars, the focus of the annual plenary sessions,
are a unique forum for top-level management in statistical offices to explore
in depth the fundamental issues of statistical systems and leading-edge emerging
topics. The seminars often lead to work in new areas and the preparation of
new standards and recommendations. Recent examples include Recommendations
for the 2010 Censuses of Population and Housing and Guidelines for Confidentiality
and Microdata Access.
Two areas to be discussed by the CES in June 2007 are (a) improving efficiency
and productivity of statistical offices and (b) the measurement of capital,
going beyond the traditional measures. The former is a pertinent issue due
to increasing demands and expectations of users on the one hand, and financial
constraints on the other. With regard to measuring capital, the conventional
notions have become too narrow as the values of companies are increasingly
determined by their innovative capacities in such intangible forms as scientific
research, information technology, and branding. The CES will explore how these
supplementary forms of capital can be captured by official statistics and
measured in a meaningful way.
In developing statistical methodology, the main work areas
are economic, social and demographic statistics, and cross-cutting issues
such as statistical information technology and dissemination.
The UNECE secretariat actively participates in the updating of the global
methodological standards for the compilation of the Gross Domestic Product
(GDP) and other major economic indicators, such as the System of National
Accounts 1993 (SNA 93). Special attention is paid to ensure that
the countries of Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia (EECCA) and
of South-Eastern Europe (SEE) are well informed of the process and their opinion
on the revision issues is taken into account. The UNECE Statistical Division
provides technical assistance to the EECCA and SEE countries to improve national
accounts to help these countries follow developments in the EU member States.
Projects for 2007 include the survey on employment data and measures of productivity
in the EECCA and SEE countries.
The Statistical Division is actively involved in developing methodology
on emerging issues of interest to both developed and transition economies,
such as measurement of the impact of globalization on the
national statistical systems in general and on economic statistics in particular.
Reductions in trade and political barriers together with rapid advances in
communication and transport allow companies to operate across national boundaries.
As a result, the measurement of national economies through the traditional
statistical measures and national accounts framework becomes more difficult.
In cooperation with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
(OECD), Eurostat, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the United Nations
Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), the CES explores how statistical
offices can cope more effectively with the statistical distortions that accompany
globalization. Work will first focus on the economic side of globalization,
moving to employment, population, and migration at a later stage. Within the
technical assistance framework, in 2007 UNECE is organizing a workshop on
globalization and its effect on national accounts in Ukraine.
Measuring sustainable development is another area where
joint work by UNECE, OECD and Eurostat is following up a CES seminar. Given
the many different definitions of sustainability and the different indicator
sets used to measure it, identifying good practices that could help national
governments and international organizations to develop official statistics
in the area poses a challenge. A working group is researching a conceptually
sound, statistically-based approach to the measurement of sustainable development,
by reconciling two main approaches used so far by different countries and
organizations based either on the concept of capital or sets of indicators
linked to sustainable development policies.
In the field of economic short-term statistics, there is
a serious lack of international comparability for the EECCA and SEE countries
in terms of key indicators such as industrial production and price indices.
A pilot project to analyse the possibilities of calculating seasonally adjusted
short-term statistics will continue through 2007, and methodological work
on the compilation of coherent data series will be undertaken. Furthermore,
UNECE aims to ensure that EECCA and SEE countries are able to catch up in
the implementation of business registers – an indispensable tool for
an efficient system of data collection from businesses.
The UNECE Statistical Division maintains an online statistical database that
provides the basis for comparing major economic and social indicators for
the developed countries and economies in transition. The macroeconomic and
gender databases will be improved to implement the recommendations of the
external assessment carried out in 2006.
In recent years, UNECE has played a leading role (sometimes jointly with
other organizations) in developing social and demographic statistics,
for example gender statistics and census, migration and health status
statistics. In addition to methodological work, UNECE provides policymakers,
gender analysts and the general public with timely data on gender disparities.
Some of the available data include areas such as decision making that are
not disseminated by any other international organization. A new series of
training tools and events is planned that will improve the availability and
quality of gender statistics, particularly in the EECCA and SEE countries
(in collaboration with the World Bank). UNECE is also offering a unique forum
for statisticians, researchers, and policy makers to improve the measurement
of violence against women.
UNECE provides support for the production of comparable social and demographic
data particularly in the areas of population and housing censuses (in cooperation
with Eurostat), migration statistics, and measurement of health status (in
cooperation with Eurostat and WHO), as well as technical assistance to EECCA
and SEE countries on the implementation of standards in these areas. UNECE
works to provide statistical support in monitoring achievement of
the Millennium Development Goals and improving the use of statistics
for policymaking and monitoring in the EECCA and SEE countries. Challenges
also relate to more involvement of Central Asian countries and statistical
users in the development of standards.
The UNECE secretariat provides a unique forum where informatics managers
from national and international statistical offices can share experience with
other countries. It also plays an important role in the standardization of
statistical metadata. The Common Metadata Framework, maintained online by
UNECE, provides statisticians with a single gateway to multiple information
sources on metadata related standards.
UNECE has also facilitated the development of new methods to improve the
quality of statistics. Three volumes of methodological guidelines on statistical
data editing and imputation have been published. Future challenges in the
management relate to reconciling sometimes contradictory goals, e.g. making
data providers increasingly responsible for data quality while decreasing
response burden; increasing the detail and availability of data in online
databases while improving the protection of confidentiality; linking various
data sources and combining statistical surveys with administrative registers;
and promoting the understanding of the importance of statistical metadata
as a key to statistics. The work on dissemination provides a forum for statistical
organizations to discuss issues related to media and public relations activities.
The UNECE Statistical Division also assists countries in building and improving
their statistical capacity by organizing seminars and workshops, providing
advisory services, promoting the implementation of international standards
and recommendations, transmitting best practices, and acting as a forum for
exchange of experience. UNECE helps countries to implement the United
Nations Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics by giving advice
on statistical legislation and institutional frameworks, and on how to ensure
the independence and impartiality of official statistics, especially to countries
with economies in transition.
One continual challenge for the Statistical Division, the deficit of financial
resources for providing the highly required assistance for statistical capacity
building in the EECCA and SEE countries, can be partially solved through increasing
cooperation with other international organizations. The Statistical Division
is exploring the possibility of establishing a Trust Fund to support statistical
capacity-building in the UNECE region.
Ms. Katherine K. Wallman
Chairperson, Conference of European Statisticians
Coordination of work and division of labour between UNECE, Eurostat
and OECD – always a focus of the CES – has become increasingly
important in the light of the fact that 27 of the 56 UNECE member States
now belong to the EU and nearly all OECD member countries participate
in the work of the CES. In addition to providing substantive contributions
and secretarial support to numerous joint activities, the UNECE framework
allows non-EU and non-OECD countries in the region work with these partner
organizations. UNECE also provides a bridge for European-based specialized
United Nations agencies (e.g. FAO, UNESCO, ILO, and WHO) to work with
national statistical offices.
CES organizes meetings with other international organizations on topics
of mutual interest, particularly in the area of standards development. The
active and fruitful cooperation with other international organizations has
led to many joint projects bearing excellent results. With OECD and Eurostat,
over the past 15 years UNECE has developed the “Database of International
Statistical Activities in the UNECE Region.” This interactive database
(available at http://unece.unog.ch/disa/ ) includes information on the more
than 30 organizations that undertake statistical work in the region (e.g.,
data collections, standards development, and exchanges of expertise). Using
this forward-looking database, one can not only monitor and coordinate the
goals and planned activities of the various organizations, but also capitalize
on their comparative advantages and reduce redundancies in the work.
An important feature of the CES is that it provides a neutral platform where
all member countries and organizations have the opportunity to participate
in the discussions on an equal footing, and are able to interact regularly
with Eurostat, OECD, the United Nations Statistics Division, IMF, the World
Bank, and ILO. The work agenda is determined primarily by the needs of countries,
not by those of international organizations. The CES provides a flexible structure
that allows the UNECE secretariat (within the limits of its resources) to
address emerging issues in statistics promptly by creating ad hoc working
groups that have clear sunset clauses, and to continue its efforts to efficiently
and effectively address the challenges ahead.
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