News[2025]

The 2025 SNA framework will serve as the internationally recognized standard for compiling economic activity measures. It aims to enhance the understanding of well-being and sustainability while providing adaptable methods to integrate environmental and social dimensions into economic statistics. Critical conceptual and measurement issues, such as in advancements of digital products, the complex interplay between economic, social, and environmental factors, and the intricacies of global trade, have been harmonized and incorporated into the updated framework to a great extent.

As national statistical systems prepare to implement these updates, the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) Statistics Division and the Statistical Institute for Asia and the Pacific (SIAP) will jointly organize a webinar, in collaboration with the Intersecretariat Working Group on National Accounts (ISWGNA) and Project Management Team, to inform participants about the objectives of the SNA update, its implementation strategy, and the key changes introduced in the 2025 framework. This webinar will also provide an overview of the consolidated recommendations for updating the 2008 SNA, ensuring that national statistical offices can transition smoothly to the revised framework. While the 2025 SNA update emphasizes international comparability, the implementation strategy acknowledges country-specific circumstances, including national priorities, data availability, and resource constraints. The discussion will highlight recommendations on how these updates can be implemented effectively, particularly in the Asia-Pacific region, where some economies face significant resource limitations.

The 2025 SNA framework will serve as the internationally recognized standard for compiling economic activity measures. It aims to enhance the understanding of well-being and sustainability while providing adaptable methods to integrate environmental and social dimensions into economic statistics. Critical conceptual and measurement issues, such as in advancements of digital products, the complex interplay between economic, social, and environmental factors, and the intricacies of global trade, have been harmonized and incorporated into the updated framework to a great extent.

As national statistical systems prepare to implement these updates, the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) Statistics Division, the Statistical Institute for Asia and the Pacific (SIAP), and the Pacific Community (SPC) will jointly organize a webinar, in collaboration with the Intersecretariat Working Group on National Accounts (ISWGNA) and Project Management Team, to inform participants about the objectives of the SNA update, its implementation strategy, and the key changes introduced in the 2025 framework. This webinar will also provide an overview of the consolidated recommendations for updating the 2008 SNA, ensuring that national statistical offices can transition smoothly to the revised framework. While the 2025 SNA update emphasizes international comparability, the implementation strategy acknowledges country-specific circumstances, including national priorities, data availability, and resource constraints. The discussion will highlight recommendations on how these updates can be implemented effectively, particularly in the Asia-Pacific region, where some economies face significant resource limitations.

Within the framework of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), gender equality is not only a standalone goal but also one of the crosscutting universal values that underpin the SDGs and a necessary precondition for achieving the goals of the 2030 development agenda. Good quality, timely, comparable, and disaggregated gender data provide the evidence needed to measure progress towards achieving the gender-related SDG goals and targets. The Progress on the Sustainable Development Goals – The Gender Snapshot 2024 produced by the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women) and the Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) shows that while there are notable advancements, including reductions in poverty, narrowing gender gaps in education, and progress toward legal reforms, there remains progress to be achieved across all indicators, with only five years left to reach the 2030 Sustainable Development Goal deadline. 

This e-learning course aims to build capacity in national statistical systems for the development and implementation of Reproducible Analytical Pipelines (RAPs) for Official Statistics.

What is a Reproducible Analytical Pipeline?
Simply put, reproducible analytical pipelines (RAPs) are automated statistical processes (data processing and analysis) that codify to the greatest extent possible the production of official statistics. Common tools that are used to develop RAP include software such as R or Python, and version control management tools such as Git.
Reproducibility is at the heart of the approach. It implies that the outputs can be generated again with any new or revised input datasets using the RAP developed. This also implies drafting documents explaining the RAP that make it possible to build institutional knowledge and use the RAP in the future by new staff.\

Why are Reproducible Analytical Pipelines important for Official Statistics?
All national statistical systems are engaged in the regular, high frequency production of many official statistics. For example, most countries compile monthly consumer price index (CPI). The input data for the compilation of CPI is generally the same from month to month. By developing and implementing an RAP for the compilation of CPI, countries can improve the timeliness and quality of the CPI since automation reduces the time required to clean and analyze the data; it also reduces the chance of errors that could occur when relying on non-automated processes.

Furthermore, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) require that countries use more diverse data sources in the compilation of indicators. The COVID-19 crisis has shown that automated tools can facilitate data analysis and reporting when these sources are updated. These tools, including software such as R and sharing platforms such as GitHub, allow statisticians to streamline data cleaning, compilation, and analysis.

National statistical systems are increasingly using administrative data to compile official statistics. Such data can be utilized to better meet the increasing demands for new statistics and indicators that are highly disaggregated. Administrative data is not collected for the primary purpose of compiling official statistics, and statisticians need to ensure that the data meets certain criteria before using it to produce official statistics. This course provides an overview of administrative data, a discussion of data quality issues and institutional mechanisms to ensure that administrative data can be used in the production of official statistics. The course builds upon content developed for in-person training courses conducted by UNSD and to which members of the Collaborative on Administrative Data have provided valuable input.

CPIs 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.