PHILIPPINE STATISTICAL ASSOCIATION (PSA), INC.

PSSC Bldg., Commonwealth Avenue, Diliman, Quezon City

Telefax No: (63-2) 456-1928; 920-6513

Email: ;

Web: http://www.nscb.gov.ph/psa

Project: STRENGTHENING THE NATIONAL STATISTICAL SYSTEMS IN SELECTED COUNTRIES IN THE ASIA AND PACIFIC REGION

Supported by the

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)

Report of

FAO PSA Sub-Regional Workshop on

CountrySTAT and Metadata

October 23-27, 2006, Metro Manila, Philippines

Co-organized by

BUREAU OF AGRICULTURAL STATISTICS (BAS)

STATISTICAL RESEARCH AND TRAININGCENTER (SRTC)

Abbreviations and Acronyms

BASBureau of Agricultural Statistics

BLESBureau of Labor and Employment Statistics

BSPBangko Sentral ng Pilipinas

DADepartment of Agriculture

FAOFood and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

FAO RAPFAO Regional Office for Asia and Pacific

NSCBNational Statistical Coordination Board

NSMNational Statistics Month

NSONational Statistics Office

PSAPhilippine Statistical Association

PSSPhilippine Statistical System

RDESRegional Data Exchange System

SRTCStatistical Research and TrainingCenter

  1. Introduction
  2. Focal persons of the FAO Regional Data Exchange System (RDES) Project from sixteen countries, viz., Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, China, Fiji, India, Indonesia, Iran, Lao PDR, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Vietnam, attended the FAO-PSA Sub-Regional Workshop on CountrySTAT and Metadata held at the Linden Suites in Pasig City in Metro Manila, Philippines, from 23 to 27 October 2006.One observer from India also participated. Two representatives from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) Headquarters; one representative from FAO RAP; two representatives of the Philippine Bureau of Agricultural Statistics (BAS); and, one representative of the Philippine National Statistical Coordination Board (NSCB) also attended the workshop serving as resource persons. Annex 1 lists all the twenty-three workshop participants, the invited speakers and the secretariat.
  3. The workshop aimed to raise awareness on CountrySTAT, including opportunities and challenges, based on the Philippine experience in its installation and to provide discussions about metadata documents on national agricultural statistical systems prepared by participating countries. The latter objective aimed to help make the workshop documents ready for an official publication to reflect the current state and developments of agricultural statistics among the participating countries.
  1. To meet these objectives, the workshop was organized to consist of plenary and breakout sessions. Plenary sessions consisted of a presentation, followed by discussions by designated participants, and an open forum.For the breakout sessions, the sixteen participating countries were divided into four groups with four countries per group. The program of activities is reflected in Annex 2.
  1. Opening Session
  1. Dr. Jose Ramon G. Albert, PSA immediate past President, welcomed the participants, on behalf of Dr. Isidoro P. David, PSA President. Dr. Albert emphasized that documenting metadata and disseminating agriculture statistics through CountrySTAT were good practices for ensuring that countries did not become merely “data rich” but “information poor”, i.e., that national data and metadata collections should serve the ends of analysis and policy making and should therefore be harmonized. Dr. Albert’s speech, as well as the other messages given during the opening program, is given in Annex 3.
  2. In his message, Dr. Segfredo R. Serrano, Undersecretary of the Philippine Department of Agriculture, related how impressed he was by the FAOSTAT when he first encountered the system via a demonstration in a visit to FAO headquarters eight years ago in Rome and how pleased he was to see that a CountrySTAT version was now being readied for implementation by FAO member countries. He said he was proud that the Philippines was chosen as the pilot country for its development and implementation and that he took this as a sign of the trust and belief of the international statistical community in the capability and dedication of statisticians in the Philippines.
  3. Dr. Serrano shared that the Philippine agricultural statistical system, under the leadership of the BAS, had proved to be a reliable source of the statistics and information needed for the crafting of the appropriate policies, plans and programs for the development of agriculture and fisheries, both at the national and sub-national levels. He thanked the BAS for the services it was providing and reiterated his and the Department’s support to the agricultural statistical system. He also thanked the FAO, the PSA, the SRTC and the rest of the Philippine Statistical System for the cooperation they had extended to the BAS in the implementation of this project.
  4. Mr. Kazuyuki Tsurumi, FAO Representative in the Philippines, said that achieving food security for all was at the heart of FAO's efforts to make sure people had regular access to enough high-quality food to lead active and healthy lives and that in order to carry out this mandate, it was indispensable for FAO to collect, analyze and disseminate statistical information in the relevant fields of competence to FAO members, including the state of food and agriculture.
  5. He said that the statisticians of member countries would need to make their contribution by providing reliable data since the demands for reliable food and agricultural statistics were ever increasing and the need to collect data on newer and more complex areas was becoming more prominent. In this connection, Mr. Tsurumi informed that FAOSTAT had been modernized to better serve the users and that along with FAOSTAT, a new country-level version, CountrySTAT, had been developed and piloted in some countries.
  6. He expressed FAO’s appreciation of the continued support from Japan in strengthening agricultural statistics systems in the region and acknowledged the catalytic work done under the Japan-assisted FAO project on development of Regional Data Exchange System (RDES). Lastly, he thanked the PSA for hosting this workshop and providing excellent facilities and an environment conducive to fruitful and productive discussions.
  7. In his message, Dr. Romulo A Virola, Secretary-General, NSCB and Chair, SRTC Governing Board, cited statistics across selected countries in the region, on the share of agriculture GVA to GDP, on the share of agricultural exports, and on the share of the agricultural labour force to total labour force, to remind everyone that agriculture was a very important sector in the economies of the region. And yet, Dr. Virola noted, hunger and undernourishment continued to stalk the countries in the region. He, therefore, wondered whether or not our development efforts, our development strategies, our development tools were informed choices based on statistics being produced by the national statistical systems.
  8. He said he was very pleased that the Sub-Regional Workshop on CountrySTAT and Metadata was taking place in the Philippines and congratulated the FAO for this excellent initiative. He also thanked FAO for its confidence in the Philippine Statistical System, having chosen it to be a partner in this endeavor through the Philippine Statistical Association, the Bureau of Agricultural Statistics and the Statistical Research and TrainingCenter. He expressed his pleasure and pride that through the leadership of the Bureau of Agricultural Statistics, the Philippine CountrySTAT was being launched on this day.
  9. Dr. Virola said that the influence of statistics in the lives of eight billion people in the world today was now slowly but surely being appreciated and that the knowledge-based economies of the Third Millennium could not and would not survive the intense and fierce global competition without the benefit of relevant, timely and accessible statistics. He thanked the FAO for leading the way in improving agricultural statistics in particular. Finally, he appealed to the participants to ensure that they left the workshop with the resolve to make the commitments of establishing their own CountrySTAT come true, as the lives of farmers depend on their ability to access and use statistics in evidence-based decision making.
  10. Mr. Hiek Som, Chief, Surveys and Statistical Development Service in his message in behalf of the Statistics Division, described the CountrySTAT as an Internet-based system to facilitate organization and dissemination of national agricultural statistical data in an efficient and structured way, containing both statistical data and related metadata. He explained that statistical metadata was information on how, when, where, why, and by whom the data were collected and that metadata would provide a better understanding of all the data items and the way to obtain them within the national agricultural statistical system. He likened the relationship between CountrySTAT and Metadata to the relationship between a container and the contents, metaphorically, like a rice bowl and rice.
  11. He said it was now time for the focal points to come together to share their experiences and difficulties encountered during the preparation of their respective country reports and to find the answers and solutions from their colleagues in the coming discussions of this workshop.
  12. In addition to the workshop participants and invited speakers, the heads and representatives of the major statistical agencies of the PSS also attended the Opening Session. These included (a) Ms. Carmelita N. Ericta, Administrator of the National Statistics Office (NSO); (b) Ms. Maria Criselda Sy, Director of the Bureau of Labor and Employment Statistics (BLES); (c) Mr. Gervacio G. Selda, Jr., Executive Director, SRTC; (d) Ms. Maura S. Lizarondo, Assistant Director of the BAS; (e) Ms. Ludivinia D. Gador of the BSP.
  1. The key officials of the PSS and representatives of FAO held hands during the Launching of the Philippine CountrySTAT to symbolize the solidarity formed, linkages developed and commitments made in the installation and maintenance of CountrySTAT.
  1. Plenary Sessions

Introduction of CountrySTAT

Session 1

  1. Mr. Candido J. Astrologo, Jr., Officer-in-Charge of the Office of the Director of NSCB’s National Statistical Information Center (NSIC) provided an overview of FAOSTAT and CountrySTAT.He discussed the objectives, statistical framework and coordinating mechanisms in FAOSTAT.
  2. CountrySTAT was a framework for organizing, harmonizing, and synchronizing of data collection and dissemination in food and agriculture for analysis and decision-making. It was meant to be a country-specific version of the FAOSTAT. Thus, its framework followed that of FAOSTAT. CountrySTAT outputs, such as data and metadata on food accounts (production, trade, population, food security), resource accounts (inputs and production), economic accounts (inputs, production), and price accounts (input, output, trade), were designed to load easily into FAOSTAT. CountrySTAT, however, was flexible enough to allow a country to develop and implement a statistical information system relevant to its agricultural situation and thrusts.
  3. The CountrySTAT system was built around the PC-Axis family of software applications. It had been piloted in countries, such as: KyrgyzRepublic (thru the National Statistical Committee), Kenya (thru its Central Bureau of Statistics), and Ghana (thru its Statistical Service). In cooperation with the FAO, the Philippines (through the PSA) took steps in setting up Philippine CountrySTAT, with the Bureau of Agricultural Statistics as focal agency.
  4. Ms. Pornpun Hensawang of Thailand gave a discussion on the presentation. She pointed out the importance of metadata in each country. She also asked whether countries should strictly use the same definitions and core data; what a country should do when it did not conduct surveys; and who should be in charge of quality control in a country.
  1. Participants, particularly from Bangladesh, India and Pakistan, raised clarifications on whether it would be important to adhere to standard core data for CountrySTAT, given the inherent differences in policy thrusts of each country. Also, participants wanted to know how easy it was to export data already available and accessible in the public domain to CountrySTAT and to FAOSTAT.Participants also asked how technical assistance could be made available to set-up the CountrySTAT system.
  1. Mr. Astrologo mentioned that the basic modules of CountrySTAT for each country should be similar to the FAOSTAT modules, but this did not preclude the country from adding more variables or indicators. In the long term, an automatic uploading of data from CountrySTAT to FAOSTAT was envisaged.In a decentralized statistical system, different agencies might be collecting data so it would be necessary for one agency to be designated to compile and release official statistics.
  2. It was noted that there were instances when information officially released by countries were inconsistent with those made available in FAOSTAT. Mr. Som explained that FAO figures were based on official country data and other information available reported by countries. In many cases, the person responsible for reporting statistics from the country was either a representative of the National Statistics Office, or the Ministry of Agriculture. FAO released as official estimates country submissions on estimates of indicators. In case when FAO did not receive submissions from countries, FAO sought information from other sources like country reports, and published these data as FAO estimates, but not as official figures.
  3. Mr. Astrologo pointed out that as long as an agency could secure a license from the developers of PC Axis (Statistics Sweden), and there was at least one staff in the agency skilled in basic computer programming, it should be possible to develop a CountrySTAT system. There might be a need to conduct trainings in each country to install CountrySTAT.
  4. Mr. Som mentioned that FAO usually relied on external funding for training, possibly from a donor agency, such as the European Union (EU) or some other donor country. FAO might help countries identify donors to finance technical assistance. Alternatively, arrangements might be made for technical staff of countries to attend training on CountrySTAT in a neighboring country. The creation of a CountrySTAT manager post in FAO Headquarters was indicative of the priority given by FAO to installing the CountrySTAT system among countries that were willing to do so.
  5. In summary, when the CountrySTAT system was developed in a particular country, the core indicators might be customized to serve the nation’s needs. Core statistics in each country might be different from those in FAOSTAT, but it was recommended that those in FAOSTAT be taken as the minimum, with the countries adding other indicators.

Demonstration of CountrySTAT in the Philippines

Session 2

  1. Mr. Jing Jalisan, BAS Webmaster, gave a presentation of Philippine CountrySTAT.He discussed the technical and human resource development requirements for installing the CountrySTAT system.He also provided an overview of the main features of the PC-Axis family of software, which is used for developing the system. Mr. Jalisan presented the activities and processes involved in pre-installation of Philippine CountrySTAT. Some sample maps from CountrySTAT and results from a CountrySTAT query were demonstrated.An overview of the processes for regular updating information in the system was also given.
  2. Mr. Raja Abdul Hameed of Pakistan and Mr. Rabi Singh of Nepal gave discussions on the presentation. Mr. Hameed congratulated the Philippines on this achievement, and mentioned the importance of having this system available to other countries. He pointed out that if Pakistan were to start this system, the budget should not be a problem but technical assistance would be needed. He also asked how much manpower and time were used to install Philippine CountrySTAT; whether quality checks on the accuracy of data in CountrySTAT were done; how flexible CountrySTAT was in accepting new dimensions to the data; and whether other agencies, aside from BAS, could revise the data in the CountrySTAT system. Mr. Singh reiterated the need for technical assistance, and wanted to clarify whether it would be advisable to use an existing system or to replace it with the CountrySTAT system.He also inquired about the ease of data access in the system by data users and the process of getting the license for the software.
  1. Ms. Lizarondo of the Philippines mentioned that four people in the web administration unit of BAS were involved in the technical installation of the Philippine CountrySTAT system. In addition, within BAS, a CountrySTAT core team consisting of eight people, serving as key point persons, was formed to serve as clearinghouse for the CountrySTAT.This team worked hand in hand with a Task Force who was responsible for updating and uploading the data on the BAS Website.An inter-agency group consisting of members from across the different major statistical agencies in the PSS also provided other necessary data for the system. On the issue of data revisions it was reported that, within BAS, a data review system was in place to look into the quality of data collected on all statistics, primarily production and price statistics.Data revisions were allowed but subject to an approved policy and process on revisions.
  2. Regarding data access in CountrySTAT, Mr. Jalisan said that data access was rather easy and might be readily achieved through submission of queries in the CountrySTAT website. Improving Philippine CountrySTAT was still part of the work program of BAS. Hitherto, BAS had not yet received any feedback from users about CountrySTAT since it was formally launched only during the workshop.
  3. Ms. Lizarondo pointed out that PC-Axis was also rather new to the Philippines.Staff of the PSS, especially within BAS, had to undergo rounds of training on how to use the software, with many of those trained recognizing the usefulness of the PC-Axis software. Owing to a provision on the use of the software from its developers (Statistics Sweden), the NSCB (which has a license from Statistics Sweden) allowed BAS to freely use the software under a memorandum of agreement.On the other hand, a major cost in the installation of Philippine CountrySTAT system was the provision of a dedicated server for the system.
  4. In response to requests for clarifications on maintenance of up-to-date information in the CountrySTAT system, Mr. Jalisan explained that data sets on various indicators were requested from divisions within BAS and other major statistical agencies of the PSS with specific deadlines to submit these data. Updating of information was based on the regular submissions of data by members of the Technical Working Group and the BAS CountrySTAT Core Team.
  5. Regarding pricing policies, Ms. Lizarondo mentioned that, at present, access to the statistics in Philippine CountrySTAT was free of charges, although BAS was considering a cost recovery scheme based on a pricing policy still being formulated. The priority, however, was to install the CountrySTAT, and use it to disseminate data in a timely and useful manner. Mr. Som mentioned that in the FAOSTAT system, some data were free, but charges were also requested for data exceeding certain limits.
  6. In summary, it was pointed out that the advantages of the CountrySTAT included the PC-Axis family of software being easy to use, outputs being produced faster than by other software, as well many attractive and useful features (such as graphs, tables and maps). However, it was important to have implementation and maintenance guidelines for CountrySTAT.

CountrySTAT as a Tool for Establishing Metadata:The Philippine’s Experience
Session 3