Calender_2024

The achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) requires the availability of high-quality, timely and reliable data to produce the relevant SDG indicators and other statistics, disaggregated as relevant. To meet this need, official statistics must modernize and incorporate new data sources, including Big Data. At its 53rd session in 2022, the Statistical Commission underscored the importance of mainstreaming the use of big data and data science into the work programmes of national statistical offices and the necessity to include training in big data and data science into the training curricula of national statistical offices. This course is a first response to this injunction by sharing experience, and providing the pedagogical activities required for understanding the process leading to the production and dissemination of official statistics and SDGs with new data sources.

The course Big Data: Innovative Methods and Applications for Achieving organized by the United Nations Statistical Institute for Asia and Pacific (UNSIAP), with the contribution of the UN Women Centre of Excellence for Gender Equality (Seoul, Korea) will be conducted from 21 to 25 October 2024, in Chiba, Japan.

According to the World Health Organization , in 2021 more than 700 million people in Asia and the Pacific lived with some form of disability, which accounted for 16 per cent of the population. Persons with disabilities encounter social and economic barriers and bias in all aspects of life. Disability statistics enable tracking socioeconomic indicators related to persons with disabilities, therefore understanding better their needs to participate in society on an equal basis and identifying policy gaps to ensure disability-inclusive development.

Within the framework of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, disability inclusion in the development process has been increasingly crucial, necessitating the need to improve disability disaggregated data to monitor disability-related Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) indicators. At a regional level, the Incheon Strategy to ‘Make the Right Real’ for Persons with Disabilities in Asia and the Pacific, the regional development goal to promote disability inclusion, reinforces the importance of disability-disaggregated data to measure progress against its targets and indicators. Disability data as a critical instrument to advance disability-inclusive development was reaffirmed by the adoption of the Jakarta Declaration on the Asian and Pacific Decade of Persons with Disabilities, 2023–2032. Underscoring the continued implementation of the Incheon Strategy, the Jakarta Declaration urges regional stakeholders to take measures to close disability data gaps and strengthen statistical capacities.

Climate change is one of the most pressing issues of our time. Its impacts on well-being are far reaching, including impacts on health and the economy. Humans have contributed to climate change largely through economic activities which are intrinsically linked to climate change. Our supply and use of energy for example has led to increased emissions of greenhouse gases which have resulted in global warming. A better understanding of the relationship between the economy and climate change through the compilation of relevant indicators is key to mitigating and adapting to climate change.

This course will focus on climate change indicators that can be compiled from environmental economic accounts. After a brief overview of climate change and, relevant polices and multilateral agreements, participants will learn how to compile various indicators that inform climate change. The focus of the course is on better understanding the relationship between climate change and economic activity. And the statistical framework that provides the concepts, definitions, and methodology for measuring this relationship is the System of Environmental Economic Accounting. Participants will learn about physical supply and use tables for energy and air emissions, and indicators that can be compiled from these accounts. Other topics to be discussed include transaction accounts which can be used to derived expenditure type indicators such those on taxes on energy and pollution.  Further details on course content follow below.

This workshop will focus on energy statistics and accounts, as well as some important energy aggregates and indicators (including SDGs). The energy accounts are based on the System for Environmental-Economic Accounting-Energy (SEEA-Energy) which is a multi-purpose conceptual framework for organizing energy-related statistics. SEEA-Energy is part of the System of Environmental Economic Accounting (SEEA) which provides the agreed upon statistical framework for measuring the relationship between the environment and the economy. It is comprised of two complimentary international statistical standards: the SEEA Central Framework (SEEA CF) and the SEEA Ecosystem Accounting (SEEA EA).  

It supports analysis of the role of energy within the economy, the state of energy inputs and various energy-related transactions of environmental interest. It is fully consistent with the SEEA Central Framework and follows an accounting structure similar to the System of National Accounts (SNA). By doing so, the SEEA-Energy allows data compilers to develop indicators and conduct analysis on the economy-environment nexus, with a focus on energy.

The United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD) and the United Nations Statistical Institute for Asia and the Pacific (UNSIAP), with the support of the Office of the Director-General for Policy Planning on Statistical Policy, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications of the Government of Japan, and in collaboration with the National Statistical Committee of the Kyrgyz Republic are organizing the Regional Workshop on Accounting Approach to Climate Change and Biodiversity for Central Asia and the Caucasus. The workshop will be held in Bishkek, Kyrgyz Republic, from 9 to 12 September 2024. The workshop will be conducted in English, with Russian interpretation.

The regional workshop is an opportunity for participants to increase their technical knowledge of the System of Environmental-Economic Accounting (SEEA) through exercises,  country examples and discussions focusing on accounts relevant to climate change and biodiversity including accounts on energy, air emission, carbon, ecosystem extent and ecosystem services. Participants will learn about the relevance of environmental economic accounts to climate change and biodiversity policies, and how SEEA can support measuring progress towards achieving the targets of national policies and international agreements including the Sustainable Development Goals, the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework and the Paris Agreement. Institutional mechanisms, data governance, data sources and dissemination approaches will also be introduced.

Consumer price indexes (CPI) measure changes over time in the general level of prices of goods and services that households acquire (use or pay for) for the purpose of consumption. In many countries, they were originally introduced to provide a measure of the changes in the living costs faced by workers, so that wage increases could be related to changing levels of prices. However, over the years, CPIs have widened their scope and now are widely used as a macroeconomic indicator of inflation, as a tool by governments and central banks for monetary policy and for monitoring price stability, and as deflators in the national accounts. With the globalization of trade and production and the liberalization of the markets, national governments, central banks, and international organizations place great importance on the quality and accuracy of national CPIs, and their international comparability.

CPIs are official statistics that are usually produced by NSOs, Ministries of Finance and Labour, or central banks. They are published as quickly as possible, generally within four weeks after the reference period. This face-to-face course, developed jointly by SIAP, IMF, and SPC, aims to build capacity to improve the compilation of consumer price indexes (CPI) that reflect international standards and best practice as described in the 2020 CPI Manual. Course topics will include overview of index calculation methods, developing weights, selecting samples, price collection, data dissemination. The program will include interactive discussions to share country experiences, practical exercises to apply concepts and methods discussed, and limited lecture.

This course offers participants the opportunity to explore and interpret key techniques in data visualization, both for data exploration and effective data presentation. Learners will analyze, evaluate, and apply essential principles of data visualization through dedicated case studies, addressing the challenges of visualizing complex datasets. The course emphasizes strategies for visualizing multi-dimensional data and introduces practical methods for representing statistical indicators on maps and within dashboards.

While the course introduces popular software, it is not focused on any particular tool. Participants are encouraged to use the software of their choice, tailoring the techniques to their specific needs.

Designed as an interactive e-learning experience, the course comprises six modules, each following a structured progression with mandatory pedagogical activities. These include videos, interactive content, chats, live lectures, webinars, document readings, exercises, homework assignments, polls, and quizzes, all aimed at engaging participants in active learning and application of the material.

The transition from paper and pencil interviewing (PAPI) to computer assisted personal interviewing (CAPI) has been one of the key hallmarks of national statistical offices’ (NSO) efforts to adopt efficient and cost-effective new technologies and modernize the collection and production of official statistics. CAPI combines the advantages of face-toface interviewing with the efficiency and accuracy of computer technology and brings several efficiencies including: (i) improving data quality, reducing the time lag between data collection and data analysis; (ii) increasing the speed of data turnaround and release; and (iii) enabling significant savings in fieldwork and data processing costs.

Like other subregions, the Pacific Islands countries and territories have, since 2010, embraced the transition to CAPI using Survey Solutions. While there has been significant investment in the new technology as well as national level support and training from the Pacific Community (SPC) for the conduct of surveys and censuses, high staff turnover and capability gaps in the Pacific subregion necessitate continuous training to further strengthen existing capacity. Furthermore, the report of the 2023 capacity needs assessment conducted by SPC reveals a skills gap of 65% in data collection and places demand for training in collection applications (Survey Solutions) as one of the highest priorities for NSOs. This finding corroborated with the results of the 2023 Training Needs Assessment undertaken by the Statistical Institute for Asia and the Pacific (SIAP).

Better national, regional, and global development policies underscored the need for resilient and trusted public data systems in evidence-based policymaking. Building back better from the pandemic and other crises, many public statistical systems need to develop adequate capacities to cope with these new and rising data demands and coordinate strategically across the new data ecosystem:  

Firstly, data producers need to coordinate efficiently to close data gaps at national level. Smart planning, monitoring and evaluation, and service delivery measures require highly disaggregated data. Yet, for low and middle-income countries, limited statistical capacity threaten response and future resilience. For instance, administrative data systems including sectoral and local data are often inefficiently coordinated.  

Secondly, entering a decade of action, governments need to align global, regional and national policy objectives. This in turn, requires an in-depth mapping of data availability vis-à-vis data requirements. The heightened demand for data to monitor progress and inform policy and development choices necessitate a comprehensive data assessment and mapping at national level, which support better alignment of the national strategy for the development of statistics (NSDS) to data demand.

Thirdly, statistical offices need to improve coordination with national and international partners to attract funding efficiently. Prioritisation and increased coordination of statistical activities, for instance through a national strategy for the development of statistics, can be conducive to attract more domestic funding as well as external resources. At the same time, there is ample scope to strengthen coordination between and among development cooperation partners and partner countries and promote south-south cooperation to make the status quo of funding for statistics more cost-efficient.  

The Partnership in Statistics for Development in the 21st Century (PARIS21) in collaboration with the Statistical Institute for Asia and the Pacific (SIAP) developed a unique training course for NSS, NSO leaders and national planning senior managers to improve strategic planning for data and statistics development, using innovative tools and methods. The course will give a thorough introduction to the NSDS design process. In addition, this course will feature special topics on gender statistics, climate change data, children data as well as communications around the NSDS.