International Seminar on Strategic Planning and Programming of Statistical Activities

(Moscow, 17-19 October 2001)

International Seminar on Strategic Planning and Programming of Statistical Activities was held in Moscow from 17 to 19 October 2001. The Seminar was organized jointly by the World Bank, Eurostat, Statcommittee of the CIS and Goskomstat of the Russian Federation under the auspices of “Paris21”. Participating in the Seminar were the leaders of statistical services, executives of the offices of the presidents and governments, economic ministries and agencies, central banks of the CIS countries, leaders of the Statcommittee of the CIS, representatives of the World Bank, Eurostat, UN Economic Commission for Europe, leaders and senior specialists of the statistical services and other agencies of the United Kingdom, Czech Republic, Mongolia and Japan.

Speakers at the opening session were Mr. M. Korolev, Chairman of the Statcommittee of the CIS, Mr. M. Belkindas (the World Bank), Mr. P. Nanopoulos (Eurostat) and Mr. V. Sokolin, Chairman of the Goskomstat of the Russian Federation.

The agenda of the Seminar included the following items:

  • Status of Multi-Annual Statistical Planning Activities in CIS Countries;
  • Policy and Planning -Linking the MISP to the Policy Environment;
  • Vision for the Statistical System:Linking the Long-Term Goals to the Short and Medium Term Plans and Priorities;
  • Assessing Current Status of Statistics -Demonstrating Some Techniques;
  • Setting Priorities;
  • Resource Planning -Matching Resourcse to Objectives;
  • General Issues in Statistical Capacity;
  • Next Steps.

The speaker at the first session was Mrs. L. Bogdanova (Statcommittee of the CIS), who informed the participants about the results of the survey conducted by the CIS Statcommittee in March 2001 with the purpose to assess the current state in the development of MISP in the CIS countries.

As the results of the survey have shown, the majority of the Commonwealth statistical services have been developing the MISP since 1992 by their own initiative, some -following the demands of their governments. The MISP adopted by the national statistical services are envisaged for the period from three to ten years. The main customers of the works included in the MISP are state bodies. Many works are included by the initiative of the leaders and specialists of the CIS statistical bodies, basing on their work experience. Absolutely all statistical bodies of the CIS countries coordinate national activities at all the levels of statistical system, of information interaction with other administrative sources of the country. In the majority of the CIS countries MISP are approved by their governments after preliminary coordination with the interested ministries and agencies.

The results of the survey have shown main difficulties which are faced by the national statistical services in the development and approval of the MISP as well as management problems.

The discussants at the session were Mr. T.Beridze, Chairman of the State Department of Georgia on Statistics and Mr. A. Smailov, Chairman of the Agency of the Republic of Kazakhstan on Statistics. In their discussion they informed the participants about the experience of their countries in development and realization of multi-annual programmes of statistical activities and improvement of statistics. They described in details the results of the activities of statistical bodies of their countries in the implementation of state statistics reforming programmes, transition of statistics to international standards.

The main speakers at the second session were Mr. J. Chapron, representative of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, and Mr. Z. Kudabaev, President of National Statistical Committee of the Kyrgyz Republic.

The first speaker expressed the point of view of an international organization on the problem of linking the MISP to the policy environment. In particular, he spoke about the development of statistics in the context of policy making, about the needs in information of the people making decisions, about determining priorities in respect to information needs and role of statisticians, about monitoring policy and tasks of statistics at the international level.

Mr. Z. Kudabaev in his speech touched upon the problems of linking the MISP to National Poverty Reduction Strategy and Comprehensive Framework of the Kyrgyz Republic Development. He spoke in details about the role and tasks of the National Statistical Committee in monitoring and assessing the implementation of two programmes which are very important for the country as well as about the reforming, improvement and development of state statistics.

The speakers at the third session were representatives of Eurostat (P. Nanopoulos), Ukraine (I. Shumilo), Armenia (V. Danielyan) and Russian Federation (A. Kevesh).

The paper of the Eurostat representative contained main recommendations on the structure and process of planning and programming of statistical activities. These recommendations are based on the experience of the European Union countries and it is assumed that they can be adapted to the concrete conditions of the CIS countries wishing to use them in their practice. The paper covers in details the problems of planning statistical activities for long and short-term perspective, describes the main elements of MISP, in particular, strategic frameworks, development of perspective plan envisaged for several years and of the annual plan of action. The author of the paper stresses that the multi-annual intergrated statistical programme should be a detailed document which is submitted to the government in order to coordinate it with general programmes.

The representative of the Ministry of Economy of Ukraine in his speech touched upon the problems of multi-annual statistical activities programmes development from the point of view of the main users of statistical information.

The representative of Armenia presented a paper titled: “Strategic Management and Strategic Thinking: Peculiarities of their Implementation by the National Statistical Service of the Republic of Armenia”. In this paper there was described in details the experience of the development of long and short-term programmes of statistical works in Armenia, interrelations with the users of statistical information. Along with that it was stressed that the long-term (three years ) programme is approved by the National Assembly of the country as a law, whereas the annual programme is approved by the State Council on Statistics which is the highest management body of the National Statistical Service.

In his speech Mr. A. Kevesh informed the participants about the long-term complex programme of statistics reforming in the Russian Federation till 2005. Thus, he described in details all the stages of reforming statistics, main directions, targets and tasks of the programme of its development, mentioned the federal executive bodies which participate in the programme implementation, sources of its arrangements financing.

The fourth session of the seminar discussed the question of assessing current status of statistics. The main speakers at this session were representatives of Azerbaijan (M. Gadjiev), Eurostat (P. Wolff), United Kingdom (K. Bradford Smith).

In the paper of Azerbaijan there were described the main targets and tasks of the state programme of reforming Azerbaijanian statistics, there were characterized the main stages of its implementation. Apart from that there was made a detailed analysis of the current situation in the development of statistics in Azerbaijan, there were mentioned the priority problems facing the Goskomstat, for the solution of which the work is carried out on the preparation of a new five-year programme of statistical system improvement in the Azerbaijan Republic.

The representative of Eurostat (P. Wolff) presented a paper titled “ Use and Practice of SWOT Analysis”. This analysis envisages study of strengths and weaknesses of this or other organization as well as opportunities of its functioning and threats. Being a tool of general application, this analysis is used at the preliminary stages of making decisions in preparing strategic planning works. The paper described in details each factor of the analysis which is used by Eurostat in planning and programming its activities.

The third speaker at this session informed the participants about the experience of the Department for International Development of the United Kingdom on the conduct of special surveys the aim of which is the statistical healthcheck in the countries which get the technical assistance of this Department.

The discussants of the presented papers were representatives of Belarus (G.Gasiuk) and Turkmenistan (M. Atdaeva).

The fifth session of the seminar discussed the problems of setting priorities in planning statistical activities. The main speaker at this session was the representative of Ukraine (V. Golovko). The discussants were representatives of Eurostat (P. Nanopoulos) and Uzbekistan (T. Rogoznikova). In his paper Mr. V.Golovko stressed that priorities in the development of statistics, including long-term priorities should be set with due regard for meeting the requirements of the users and the main priority here, in his opinion, is the creation of the integrated economic statistics. One of the priorities which gradually will become the most important may be the development of fundamental kinds of social statistics. Mr. P. Nanopoulos informed the participants about the approaches used by Eurostat for setting priorities in planning its statistical activities. The representative of Uzbekistan spoke about priority directions of the programme of the improvement of state statistics in the Republic till 2006. In particular, the state statistics is supposed to introduce modern methods of observation which are adequate to the conditions of market economy, create and improve statistical register, speed up the transition to the international system of classification and coding of technical and economic information.

Discussed at the sixth session were the problems of resource planning and matching resources to objectives. Papers for the discussion were presented by Mrs. M.Bohata, President of the Czech Statistical Office and Mr. V. Valkov, General Director of the Department of Statistics and Sociology of the Republic of Moldova. The first paper described the experience of the Czech Statistical Office in the development and improvement of statistics in the conditions of transition to market economy. It was mentioned in details how Czech statisticians consider European requirements of strategic planning and programming of statistical activities of the national statistical services and how human, financial and technical resources match with the set targets. The paper of Mr. V. Valkov dealt with coordination of international assistance which is rendered to Moldavian statisticians both in the framework of Tacis Programme and in the framework of bilateral cooperation with a number of international organizations and foreign national statistical services.

Being a discussant at this session Mr. M. Belkindas, the representative of the World Bank, stressed in his speech that the assessment of the needed resources and guarantee of adequate resources are important prerequisites for the implementation of statistical programmes. Efficiency of a statistical system is determined to a considerable extent by the level and stability of financial resources at its disposal and most successful are such state statistical systems which have better improvement of the results with the increase in financial resources.

Apart from the plenary sessions the agenda of the seminar envisaged the organization of four subgroup sessions, the themes of which were the following: “Roles in the Planning Process”, “Communication and Dissemination Policy (about plans and reports)”, “Evaluating the Quality of a MISP”, “Customer Role in Developing the NSS”.

The questions discussed in the first subgroup were the following: principles of forming statistical activities programmes, forms of planning, legal status of the programmes, participants of the process of planning multi-annual and annual programmes of statistical activities and their role.

The second subgroup in its discussion covered such questions as participation of different categories of statistical information users in the preparation of proposals for MISP, organization of draft MISP discussion with other governmental agencies- executors of the programme as well as with users of statistical information, the order of MISP approval, organization of control and assessment of the results achieved in the process of MISP implementation, preparation of corresponding information and its dissemination among executors of the programme and users of information.

The third subgroup discussed the questions of correctness of MISP priority directions choice, correspondence of MISP contents to the declared priorities, correctness of the choice of the ways to solve the set priorities, necessity and sufficiency of MISP contents, reality in implementing the set tasks.

The fourth subgroup was discussing its theme basing on the following questions: determination of users of statistical information, mechanisms of involvement of users in the process of making decisions on the programmes of statistical works, measurement of satisfaction of users with statistical products, ways of development of relations with mass media and private sector, determination of contradictions between the requirements of users and main principles of official statistics, interrelations with respondents as the main category of users.

The results of the discussions of the above mentioned questions in each subgroup were reported by their leaders at the eighth plenary session of the seminar. During the discussion the participants of the seminar exchanged opinions in relation to concrete proposals and possible recommendations for future work.

The ninth session of the seminar discussed the general issues in statistical capacity. The speaker at this session was Mr. M. Belkindas, the representative of the World Bank. In his presentation he touched upon two themes: “Poverty Reduction Strategy and Statistical Capacity” and “Governance Statistics”. The speaker informed the participants in details about the process of poverty reduction strategy implementation suggested by the World Bank. This process, as it is mentioned in the presentation, requires processing of a great volume of information. In this connection there arises the necessity to have an efficient system of state statistics with all its components. The creation of such a system demands first of all for the assessment of the existing statistics, determination of statistical information of state importance, its storage and periodicity, determination of a character of collection, processing, storage and dissemination of data, availability of a corresponding legal and institutional basis and plan of development of statistics. In the presentation there were given the recommendations on the methods of statistical services management, their internal organization, interrelations with the users and suppliers of data, improvement of the forms and structure of statistical reports, elaboration of efficient strategic plans of statistical systems development.

In the framework of the tenth and eleventh sessions of the seminar organized as a roundtable discussion all the participants made their own assessment of the current MISP in their countries and also discussed the ways of further continuation and improvement of the work on planning and development of such programmes as well as kinds of technical and financial assistance necessary for that.

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