Advocacy for Better Statistics

Task Team Report: Advocacy

Advocacy for Better Statistics

Graham Eele

Advocacy for Better Statistics

Progress report of the PARIS21 Advocacy Task Team, June 2002

Background

Making the case for better statistics has been seen as an important part of the work of the PARIS21 Consortium, since it was established in 1999. In order to take this work forward and to develop some general advocacy material, an Advocacy Task Team was set up at the Consortium meeting in Paris in June 2000. Between then and June 2001, the Task Team worked to put together material to make the case for statistics to a range of audiences, including respondents, data providers, data users and financial backers. The last report to the Steering Committee dates July 2001, provided an outline of what has been done, what material has been produced and plans to support statistical advocacy over the next year or so. The Task Team included more than 60 PARIS21 members and the convener has been Graham Eele, from the World Bank.

Activities and Products

The Task Team held three physical meetings in 2000 and 2001 and prepared a work program. It was agreed that consultants would be hired to prepare some generic advocacy material. Terms of reference were prepared and a competitive tender launched. An Italian Firm, Odysseus srl. Was eventually hired. They completed their contract in July 2001 and the products they produced were:

Hyper-text for a web-site entitled “Why Statistics?”. This consists of a number of pages of text with links to appropriate reference material, as well as a users guide. The material is in the form of text only, it was agreed that the contract did not provide sufficient resources to add graphics and apply web design. The material has also been made available on a CD-Rom.

A pamphlet entitled “Why governments need good statistics”

A poster on “Why statistics are crucial”

Since July 2001, the Task Team has not been very active and has held no further meetings, other than a brief discussion at the October 2001 Consortium meeting in Paris. A proposal for a new work program was sent to the Secretariat in July, but because of changes in personnel and a delay in the new manager taking up his post, it was not possible to take this forward until early in 2002.

Work Program for 2002

Following the last meeting of the Task Team in Washington DC in May 2001, a work program was drawn up, which included the following tasks.

Review all the material produced by the consultants and edit it as required
Transform “Why statistics?,” into a proper web pages, with appropriate design and lay-out following the general design parameters of the PARIS21 web-site.
Translate the advocacy materials – poster, pamphlet, and the main sections of the “Why statistics?” web-site – into French and Spanish.
Disseminate the poster and pamphlet in appropriate languages and combine the general advocacy materials into a PARIS21 package that can be distributed by the Secretariat and other members of the PARIS21 as required.
Develop regional or country-level project proposals to use the advocacy materials and to adapt them for use in different environments. The aim will be to finance these through the World Bank’s Trust Fund for Statistical Capacity Building (TFSCB) or other programs.

The Task Team Convener met the PARIS21 Secretariat in Paris in February to discuss the work program and the following course of action was agreed.

The web-site material will be independently reviewed, before it is formally launched. PARIS21 through Antoine Simonpietri will identify suitable reviewers. Once the comments of the reviewers have been received, the material will be edited. It is hoped that the process can be completed by the end of June.

PARIS21 will then launch the material through its web-site, applying the appropriate design to the pages and arranging for the basic material to be translated in French and Spanish.
Countries will be encouraged to use the material and to provide feedback. How this will be done still needs to be discussed, but it is expected that countries, through heads of statistical agencies, will be invited to take part in pilot implementation projects, possibly with technical support provided through the Secretariat. Members of the Task Team will also be asked to identify possible case study countries.
The pamphlet, as presented at the 2001 Consortium meeting needs to be re-written. The Task Team Convener will produce a new draft, using the MDGs as the overall framework and using some of the material in the DAC November 2001 SLM paper.

Progress so far

Following the February meeting the following progress has been made.

A reviewer to go through the “Why Statistics” material has been identified and the work is in progress.

A new draft of the pamphlet has been prepared and has been circulated for comments.
Discussions are in progress to develop a project proposal to use some of the advocacy material in Latin America and it is hoped that this will be presented to the World Bank’s Trust Fund for Statistical Capacity Building for consideration for funding under the fast-track facility in June.

Recommendations

Once the advocacy material has been reviewed and edited, it is recommended that the Advocacy Task Team should be wound up. Although advocacy is a continuing task, it is suggested that task teams generally work best when they have a specific task to complete and with the finalization of the materials, the tasks we set ourselves in September 2000 will have been completed.
Depending on the comments of the reviewer, it is recommended that the Secretariat arrange for the main materials to be translated into French and Spanish and that the materials be made available to Consortium members through the PARIS21 web-site and on CD Rom.
The Secretariat should encourage Consortium members to make new advocacy material available for inclusion in the web pages.
The World Bank’s Trust Fund and other donors be encouraged to finance some projects in statistical advocacy and that this topic be included on the agenda of future regional meetings.
PARIS21 generally and the Secretariat in particular should look to get statistical advocacy onto the agenda of other international statistical agencies.