In 2004 at its regular
annual session the Conference of European Statisticians,
which is the platform for coordinating the international
statistical work carried out by many international
and supranational organizations in the UNECE region,
decided to modernize and streamline its main tool
- the Integrated Presentation of International Statistical
Work - which is publicly accessible on the web in
a database format. Furthermore, the Conference approved
new mechanisms for reviewing the various subject areas
of the international statistical work. It also considered
the coordination, independence, integrity and credibility
of official statistics in a special seminar organized
by Statistics Finland.
The measurement of services and the increasing
importance of the service sector were also discussed.
In many countries the service sector constitutes
about 60-70 per cent of GDP. The difficulties encountered
in the coordination of environment statistics were
analyzed and the Conference recommended that an
Intersecretariat Working Group review the issues
related to overlaps in data collection and improving
coordination.
As one of the custodian organizations of the Fundamental
Principles of Official Statistics (adopted by UNECE
in 1992), the UNECE made a major contribution to
the drafting of a declaration of similar principles
for the statistical activities of international
organizations (to be endorsed by the Statistical
Commission in March 2005), and provided assistance
and advice for implementation of the existing principles
to Croatia, Serbia and Montenegro, and Slovakia.
A seminar on the application of UN Fundamental Principles
of Official Statistics in statistical planning for
CIS countries was held in Moscow in collaboration
with the Interstate Statistical Committee of the
CIS, the World Bank and the PARIS 21 Consortium.
The transition from 2004 to 2005 saw the launching
of public access to the macro-economic database
on the web, using a user-friendly tool for selection
and downloading. The main benefits of this database,
compared to economic databases of other organizations,
are timely and comparable statistics on the economic
situation of CIS and South-East European countries.
To increase user-friendliness, the dissemination
of the UNECE's gender statistics database was also
migrated to the new access tool.
Three major publications were released in 2004:
"Non-observed Economy in National Accounts,
a Survey of National Practices"; the pocket
version of "Trends in Europe and North America";
and "World Robotics 2004". The release
of the latter was part of a conference event entitled
"A Robot in Every Home", which attracted
considerable media attention.
The methodological work towards new or revised
standards and guidelines continued. A major new
activity was the work towards recommendations for
the 2010 round of population and housing censuses.
Most meetings held in the various subject areas
were organized as joint meetings with other organizations.
The role of the UNECE in developing standards is
to allow non-EU and non-OECD countries of the UNECE
region to be associated with the development work
of these partner organizations, or to provide a
kind of bridge for European-based specialized UN
agencies with national statistical offices.
Over and above assistance related to the implementation
of the fundamental principles, the UNECE provided
technical cooperation in statistics to the Balkans
and the CIS countries. On a bilateral basis, the
partnership with Eurostat has been continued in
the Balkans, with the global assessments of the
statistical systems of Croatia and The former Yugoslav
Republic of Macedonia, including recommendations
for short-term and medium-term improvements. Bilateral
technical cooperation has been provided to CIS as
well, especially to the Republic of Moldova on the
capacity to produce indicators for the monitoring
of progress towards the goals of the Millennium
Declaration (in collaboration with the World Bank
and Eurostat), to Azerbaijan and to Serbia and Montenegro
on gender statistics in collaboration with UNDP,
and to Kyrgyzstan on industrial production indices.
Multilateral technical cooperation has taken the
form of seminars and training workshops. A special
session on national accounts took place for CIS
and Balkan countries back-to-back with the UNECE-Eurostat-OECD
meeting on national accounts in Geneva. In the same
way, a training session on gender statistics took
place for CIS and Balkan countries back-to-back
with the UNECE working session on gender statistics
in Geneva. Finally, UNECE and UNDP organized a workshop
on gender statistics for Central Asian countries
in Turkmenistan.
Major challenges for 2005: One
of the seminar topics for the next plenary session
of the Conference will be the role of official statistics
in the measurement of sustainable development. The
Bureau will start its new form of reviewing various
areas of international statistical work in 6 selected
topics, including technical cooperation. Furthermore,
the two projects on data collection with multinational
enterprises, and on access for researchers to microdata
from official statistics, are expected to result
in the first findings/recommendations being made
public.
The UNECE Statistical Programme 2005 will see the
phasing out of some activities so as to free resources
for priority activities such as the better maintenance
of the databases (including a new electronic format
for the publication "Trends in Europe and North
America"), the methodological work in demographic
and social statistics, notably with respect to the
2010 round of censuses, the assessment of national
statistical systems to produce in a sustained way
the various MDG indicators, as well as multilateral
and bilateral technical cooperation activities for
less developed countries of the region.
2005 will see the release of the following publications:
an analytical contribution on comparisons of GDP
in the UNECE region with purchasing power parities;
the third volume of data editing methods and techniques;
and the handbook on rural development and agricultural
household statistics.