Eurostat
Unit E4
Eighth Meeting of the
Management Group on Statistical Co-operation
23 - 24, March 2006
Luxembourg, Bech building
Room Ampère
Start: 10.00 am
Scope of work of an International relations department
(Document MGSC/2006/-1/12 (former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia))
Point 3.2 of the Agenda
European Integration & International Co-operation Department at the State Statistical Office of the Republic of Macedonia (EI&IC)
Introductory
The European integration and international co-operation department is part of the Sector for legal and financial affairs and EI&IC. In the previous time it has changed the place in the organization chart for few times and once it was independent sector with two separate departments for integration issues and international co-operation. After some time, it has been merged together with the Dissemination sector, and the last shift was merging it with the Sector for legal and financial affairs.
Nevertheless, this didn’t influence the role of the department, it continued and is still very active in European integration issues and international co-operation. The dedication of the employees always to keep pace with ever demanding process of harmonization of statistics towards EU standards by supporting other colleagues in their everyday work, has created an image of a department that is always ,,at your service’’ providing necessary information and support. Even outside the office, it is becoming a common practice to contact this department especially when there is a need to co-operate with experts coming from projects of other ministries, or international requests addressed to other ministries.
Another very often change is number of the employees and their status. Namely, it happened that this department once had 7 employees, then suddenly the number was decreased on two employees. There are few reasons for that: general government policy for freezing of civil servants salaries and decision for decreasing the number of the public administration servants. The law salaries resulted in skilled persons to leave the department for better paid jobs, while the decision for decreasing the number of public administration (no permition for new employees with permanent contracts) resulted in engaging persons on part time contract ( who were constantly looking for another job).
At the moment, the department has two persons on permanent contract base (one being on maternity leave and thus has replacement for the time being), and one on part time contract.
Scope of work of EI&IC
When speaking about scope of work of this department, one can take into consideration three ” fields of work”:
Field 1: European integration
Field 2: International co-operation
Field 3: Administration
1. EUROPEAN INTEGRATION
This field of work is comprised of all issues related to the integration process of the country in the EU, harmonization process and especially applying of Acquis after Republic of Macedonia has been granted the status of a candidate country.
The role of the department is co-ordination of the work referring the bellow mentioned activities :
1.1 National Programme for Approximation towards Acquis - NPAA
The NPAA is a joint programme prepared by all ministries and government agencies under coordination of the Secretariat for European Affairs (SEA) at the Government of the Republic of Macedonia. It is made according the Aqcuis chapters, and has in its content five themes: current situation/list of Aqcuis adopted, short-term and mid-term priorities, necessary training, need for new employments and financial implications. There is an action plan and timetable developed for achieving the stated priorities. This programme is in process of adoption by the Government and afterwards it will be sent to the European Commission thus becoming a real binding document for the state bodies. This programme includes short-term priorities for the years 2006-2007, and mid-term priorities form 2008-2010. The department is in everyday communication with SEA for finalizing the NPAA document – part for statistics.
1.2 Working groups for approximation to EU legislation
In close connection with NPAA above mentioned, is creating of the working groups for each chapter of the Aqcuis. The WG for Chapter 18- statistics is under responsibility of the State Statistical Office, but also other state bodies are included (Ministry of finance, Customs authorities, Central bank, Ministry of environment, Secretariat for legislation and representative from SEA). The meetings of the working group are held every Wednesday, or every second Wednesday depending on the issues to be discussed.
The State Statistical Office has representatives in almost all 35 working groups.
1.3 Working committee for European Integration at SEA
The Working Committee for European Integration is under direct co-ordination of SEA and Vice-president of the Government who is also national aid co-ordinator. Regular meetings are held with representatives from the ministries and other state agencies at highest level where decisions are to be taken on integration process issues: priorities, deadlines, responsibilities, etc.
1.4 Action Plan for European Partnership (APEP)
The Action Plan for European Partnership is modelled on the Accession partnerships. It guides the reforms in the potential candidate countries by indicating concrete priority actions needed to achieve progress for the short and medium term. The EU requests the countries to develop a plan with a timetable and specific measures to address these priorities. The current APEP is covering the short-term priorities given in the Commission’s Opinion after receiving the status of candidate country, future base for measuring the achieved progress will be NPAA, i.e possible Accession partnership with EU. The APEP is regularly updated once a week and one general summary at the end of the month. The EC is informed every three months about the level of achievements.
1.5 Sub-committee for economic and financial issues and statistics
SSO is a member of the Sub-committee for economic and financial issues and statistics between the EC and Republic of Macedonia, in the frame of Stabilisation and Association Agreement. Regular annual meetings are organised on a rotational base in either Brussels or Skopje, and 2006 is in Skopje. The meeting agenda includes three main institutions: Ministry of Finance, National Bank and State Statistical Office, and discussion is lead together with EC representatives on progress achieved since the last meeting and further plans.
1.6 Statistical Management Information System (SMIS)
SMIS or compliance database is used for measuring of the harmonization of statistics in with EU statistical standards; especially the implementation of the methodological, as well as the legal statistical requirements and it was exercised at SSO for the first time last year, 2005. It is planned already to have another round this year only this year Eurostat will engage Artemis to carry it out.
1.7 Database of regulations
The department has made efforts in creating a base of statistical regulations according the Compendium, together with translations in Macedonian where available. The idea was to have direct links to the regulations for all employees, but currently there are technical (IT) obstacles to make it work as foreseen in the beginning. Otherwise, all information regarding the new regulations we receive from Eurostat working groups, EC Delegation or from the SSO employees are used for updating this base.
2. INTERNATIONAL CO-OPERATION
2.1 Eurostat
The intensive co-operation between Eurostat and SSO lasts for longer period, and it's improving with every further step. The SSO is among first government institutions in the country that developed excellent co-operation with one of the DG's of European Commissions - Eurostat and this co-operation is valued as one of the best by the other ministries and the Secretariat of European Integration. Not only the participation on the Eurostat working groups' meetings but also consultations and recommendations given are of great benefit for SSO in the process of applying Acquis in statistics. There are several major activities that we carry out together with Eurostat such as SMIS, GA, Donor -Q, Western Balkan Countries leaflet, statistical annex to regular annual EC report, participation of Eurostat representative on the Sub-Committees' meetings also, and the latest one that is of great importance as well, is the preparation of joint Strategy for statistical co-operation of As PHARE/CARDS countries, 2007-2009 (Macedonia, Croatia, Turkey, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Albania, Serbia and Montenegro). The strategy is planned to be presented in its final form on the next PGSC meeting to be held in Skopje, October 2006.
2.2 EC Delegation in the Republic of Macedonia
The co-operation with EC Delegation aims at joint co-ordination of the missions of EC representatives in the country, especially those involving directly the statistics and preparation of necessary statistical information needed for the mission. Introducing the new IPA instrument in our country that is foreseen to be activated next year, will change the role of the Delegation as it is planned their direct involvement in this process and by gradually closing of the European Agency for Reconstruction and forming of the CFCU.
2.3 European Agency for Reconstruction
The cooperation with EAR refers mostly to implementation of EC projects.
EAR is actively involved in preparation of the SSO twinning project now under contracting, and is the Contracting Authority. The realization of the project is joint co-ordination activity between the SSO, twinning partner and EAR.
2.4 UNECE /UN
Intensive co-operation with UNECE is in several areas: the MDG database to be developed in our office (DevInfo), the MICS 3 survey we had last year (Multiple indicator cluster survey 3 in Macedonia), participation in the Task Force on gender statistics,, Conference of the European statisticians, UNECE working sessions, questionnaires, etc. SSO has close co-operation with UNDP, FAO, UNICEF and others.
2.5 World Bank
In the frame of the co-operation agreement between the World Bank and the Republic of Macedonia, SSO has specific agreement on co-operation for the World Bank programme on poverty measurement that resulted in presentation of joint work results in 2005 and printed publications. The co-operation continues in finalizing the poverty profile with data from HBS modules on health, education and social welfare. Future plans are to continue the cooperation in the sphere of LFS - calculation of remaining Laeken indicators that.
2.6 OECD
The co-operation with OECD is in the frame of Eurostat/OECD project on measuring the Non-observed economy in the Western Balkan Region aiming at developing the national accounts of WBC on the NOE through defining the approach to dealing with the NOE, conducting ad-hoc surveys and implementation of NOE measurement and improvement of basic data. In the forthcoming period the second phase should follow up.
2.7 IMF
Regular IMF missions usually start at SSO with discussions on data needed for the mission. Co-operation with IMF experts is also present on improvement of some national accounts statistics.
2.8 OTHER INTERNATIONAL CO-OPERATION
2.8.1 Bilateral agreements
SSO has 18 agreements/memoranda signed for statistical co-operation in several fields. In the frame of this co-operation many study visits and experts missions have been realised. Recent activities occurred are one study visit realised in autumn 2005 from colleagues from Serbia and Montenegro Statistical Office on national accounts, and one to be realised in March on economic accounts for agriculture.
2.8.2 International requirements
The correspondence with international institutions is via International department, where all data requests, especially for filling in questionnaires, or updating of data, announcement of task forces and future plans, asking for experts, etc., are addressed to. This refers not only to international agencies outside the country, but also, to resident offices of international institutions in the country. What is very interesting recently as a new tendency, is the fact that even home institutions are approaching this department for many kinds of information, support or some guidance and advice.
2.9 PROJECTS
2.9.1 Regional CARDS 2001 programme for statistics
Regional CARDS programme for statistics 2001, successfully ended in June, 2005, and included three pilot projects on PPP, ETS and BS. Activities within PPP project continued on a regular base even after project has finished. The implementation of this project contributed to the enhance co-operation among national statistical institutes in the region.
2.9.2 Eurostat grant project for dissemination
The regional project for dissemination aims at developing dissemination strategies and tools for implementing the strategy. It’s duration is 18 months and leader is Estonian Statistical Office.
2.9.3 USAID support to the population census
The project ended in autumn 2005, and provided experts’ support, training at ITC-Washington and purchase of equipment.
2.9.4 National Twinning programme for statistics, 2005
The twinning project aims at strengthening of SSO capacities in producing harmonized statistics. The German Statistical Office is selected for twinning partner, while Slovenian Office for junior partner. Also, experts will be included form national Statistical institutes of Hungary, Czech and Sweden. The activities foresee signing of the contract till June, 2006. The project duration is 24 months.
2.9.5 Sida Project on improving agricultural statistics
The project is in its second phase of implementation, and several activities are successfully finalized like publishing EAA for period from 1998-2003, improving forestry statistics methodology, many experts mission referring management issues, EU knowledge, IT training, user/staff satisfaction survey, and planned activities for purchase of equipment. It is expected after conduction of Agricultural census in October, 2006, to improve the crop and livestock statistics and create the farm register that will serve as sampling base for agricultural production statistics. Within this project by reallocation of means activities will start for developing a metadata base by engaging long-term expert at SSO.
2.9.6 Sida regional project for gender statistics
The Gender statistics project's objectives are identifying gender equality policy, list of gender statistics, evaluation of existing official statistics, improvement to be made and presenting basic gender statistics to wider audience.
As a result of the work done so far, and on the occasion of the women’s day, this year a brochure has been published and publicly promoted on ” Women and men in Republic of Macedonia” that attracted great attention. Next step is organizing workshop with stakeholders, users and NGOs on gender issues and gender policy.
2.9.7 Sida Regional project on environmental statistics
The aim of this project is developing environment statistical indicators in co-operation with the Ministry of environmental protection and physical planning.
2.9.8Sida Regional project for statistical methodologies
The project content is organizing seminars on certain topics as well as two Balkan summer schools with invited lecturers and papers regarding statistical methodology. Basic aim of this project is creation of informal Balkan network of statistical methodologists from NSIs, but also involving the universities. The first summer school has been already scheduled to be organized in June, 2006 in Croatia.
2.9.9 Tempus project in co-operation with faculty of Economics
SSO has been asked to take part in the TEMPUS project under co-ordination o Faculty of Economics by participation in the trainings, as well as post-graduate studies in some of the MS related to statistics.
2.10 TRAININGS
2.10.1 INTERNATIONAL TRAINING
International trainings of employees
SSO employees take participation in many international trainings. For the need of nomination of persons to take part in some of the international events, there is written procedure by the International department that is strictly followed. There is special form for internal procedure for getting approval for training, and this form has as annex a justification letter referring the purpose and need for the training requested. The Int.Dept. carries out the complete procedure of providing approval by all necessary authorities. The MC List of Eurostat WG meetings is sent to Board of Managers, as well as UNECE meeting list.
All information received within the Office are re-sent to the Int. dept, just for informative purpose or with nomination of person. All received information on international events are distributed to the subject matter departments accordingly.
Every employee is obliged to prepare report within seven days that is placed on INTRANET.
The participation on some international event includes logistic to be provided by the Int. Dept. regarding the necessary documentation for visa issuance, hotel accommodation, organizing of transport, giving support in preparing papers. It happens many times that valuable human resources and time are spent on this administrative work that present a real burden on the scarce work power in this department.
Regarding the planned experts’ missions to SSO, the colleagues are obliged to prepare ToR according adopted general template that together with the working agenda is being agreed prior experts arrival.
Access database for follow up of international trainings
The access database is used for recording all international trainings of SSO staff. This base contains data for trainings as starting from 2001 (when this department was sector), and is continuously updated.
2.10.2IN-COUNTRY TRAININGS
Regarding in-country trainings, simplified procedure is followed for nomination of persons. However, staff is obliged to prepare a report.
Trainings for the staff of International department
Most of the trainings are referring the European integration process, but there are also some for report writing, English translation of EU legislation, workshops for running twinning projects, management, etc.
4. ADMINISTRATION (SUPPORT ACTIVITIES)
-Translation of methodologies, questionnaires, documents, etc.
-Proof-reading of English translations
-Regular correspondence with international and domestic institutions
-Participation and interpretation on seminars, workshops, meetings
-Organizing of international events hosted by SSO
-Organizing experts missions (including accommodation, transport)
-Supporting the Financial department regarding invoicing
-Running address book of international institutions and contacts
-Archiving, copying and distribution of documents.