GENERAL PRESENTATION PARIS21: 2004-2006 PROGRAMME

Gilles RAMBAUD-CHANOZ

Introduction

Background

By the end of the twentieth century, few developing countries had the capacity to generate the data necessary to monitor even a limited set of development indicators. And, despite decades of technical assistance and financial aid in support of statistics, most national statistical systems were not performing adequately. Externally funded initiatives were not being sustained, and many national systems were caught in a vicious spiral of under-performance and under-funding. It was clear that a new approach was needed. To respond to this situation, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the United Nations, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and the European Commission together have established the Partnership in Statistics for Development in the 21st Century (PARIS21). The objective was to promote dialogue and to advocate for more effective and sustained statistical capacity building. The fundamental principle was partnership ― between developed and developing countries (and international organisations) and between the providers and users of statistical data. It was also agreed that there was a crucial need to build and strengthen the capacity of national statistical systems. But this process had to be driven by developing countries themselves and be part of the development policy if it was to be sustained. The key was to reduce donor dependency and to improve coordination at all levels.

A small secretariat was established at the OECD headquarters in Paris to implement a work programme promoting dialogue between data users and producers and strengthening coordination among donors around a country-led development process. The Steering Committee is co-chaired by the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee (DAC) chairman and one of the developing country members of the United Nation Statistical Commission Bureau. It contains equal number of representatives of multilateral agencies, bilateral donors and developing statistical offices.

PARIS21 has been in operation for about four years. The external evaluation carried out in 2003 concluded that the PARIS21 initiative had generally been successful, in relation to the broader discussion as well as in delivering key outputs. The evaluators recommended that PARIS21 be extended for a further three years, that is, until the end of 2006. These recommendations were accepted by the Steering Committee that met in October 2003. For 2004–2006, the overall objective of PARIS21 is to encourage developing countries to design a National Strategy for the Development of Statistics (NSDS) by 2006.

This objective was recognised during the Second International Roundtable on Managing for Development Results, held in Marrakech, Morocco, 5 February 2004. The Roundtable adopted an Action Plan that spells out specific contributing actions towards meeting medium-term objectives. One objective is to assist national statistical systems to meet the monitoring and evaluation requirements of PRSPs, MDGs, and other national development plans through the preparation and implementation of an NSDS covering all data sectors and users.

During its first phase, PARIS21 operated mainly in Africa. In Asean region, it only co-organized one High Level Forum on statistical Capacity Building in Manilla in 2002. These workshops aimed at building and strengthening the dialogue between producers and users of statistics. Delegations from countries included statisticians, policy makers, parliamentarians, journalists, representatives from private sector, NGOs, etc. These workshops have proved particularly relevant and were well received because they coincided with government efforts to prepare Policy Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) and to report on the Millenium Development Goals (MDGs).

Most of these workshops were organised at regional level and not only have offered opportunity to network with and learn from neighbouring countries and the international community but the partnerships with users and decision-makers which are forged at the workshop lead to country-owned action plans which, as the PARIS21 evaluation has shown, most country teams have continued to develop after the workshop is over. The regional approach made the exchange of best practices and donor coordination easier and more efficient and helped the countries engaged in the process of regional integration to bring coordinated and better answers to the regional statistical needs in term of comparability, harmonisation, and quality of the data.

The involvement of sub-regional bodies in the organisation of these workshops has enabled PARIS21 to promote dialogue and coordination and to support regional economic integration in a more effective way.

For the future,  PARIS21 proposes to build on the results of these workshops and to continue to promote a culture of evidence-based policy-making and monitoring in support of results-based development and poverty reduction policies and to adopt a more systematic approach to country follow-up.

2004–2006 PARIS21 programme

The objective of the 2004–2006 PARIS21 work programme is to enable countries to prepare a National Strategy for the Development of their Statistical system by 2006 and to have begun execution of the strategy by the following year. Most developing countries are at different stages of statistical system development: some countries have completed the design of their strategy and are currently implementing it while many others, facing difficult situations, are at the inception phase of strategy design. The proposed programme consists of conducting the activities outlined below in a pragmatic and realistic approach to meet the specific needs of each country of the region.

The programme would include two interlinked parts. The first would include activities related to direct support to countries for NSDS including (i) the assessment of the current situation; (ii) the design of NSDS; and (iii) the implementation of NSDS. The second part would consist of regional support and would include (i) support to NSDS methodology: methods, tools, task teams; (ii) advocacy; (iii) donor coordination, partnership and information exchange; and (iv) reporting.

An NSDS : Why ?

“Without a strategy, an organization is like a ship without a rudder, going around in circles” from Ross and Kami.

A strategy can be seen as :

1. a broad direction for achieving long term objectives,

2. a declaration of intent, defining where you want to be in the long term and ”milestones” for getting there In a sense it is a combination of direction and destination; and,

3. a guarantee that day-to-day decisions fit in with long term interest of an organisation or system. This is very important given that in many organizations, managers spend most of their time reacting problems of the day.

The need of an NSDS is quite common and widely shared if we consider that a country will need a strategy for developing its statistics if :

1.The National Statistical System needs to be reengineered to better inform national development policies and processes,

2.There is a need to set long-term objectives for breakthrough performance improvements in critical areas of the NSS, or

3.there is a need to prioritize use of limited resources between activities, and

4.that is the best way to break the vicious circle of statistical under-development.

In fact all countries will benefit from NSDS, both those with functioning systems, which are seeking to improve performance in specific sectors and those identified as poor developing countries trapped in the vicious circle of under- development.(low appreciation of statistics, low priority, under resourcing, bad quality and service, less demand for statistics, less resources)

An NSDS will facilitate development of statistics by implementing a coordinated ans synergic system which has better chance of improving statistics than ad hoc, piecemeal and uncoordinated approach.the strategy will, among other things provide :

1.Mechanisms for advocacy, communication, galvanizing energies, forward thinking and organizational learning,

2.A framework for forging and strengthening partnerships for statistical development, for donor coordination , for continual assessment and for building capacity to meet these needs in a more coordinated and efficient manner and finally for mobilizing resources,

3.A vision for the future and a road map and milestones for getting there;

Designing a strategy is composed of several phases, it is important that at any stage of the process a formal commitment of the policy authority is needed to ensure the success of the whole exercise.

A – Direct support to NSDS country program

A.1 NSDS Baseline Assessment

This step includes an assessment of the present (2004) situation of countries of the different regions regarding the design and implementation of an NSDS. This study will be mainly based on existing documents from countries and other organisations active in this field. Country status will be analysed highlighting successes, constraints and issues related to the development of the national statistical system and the use of statistics in policy making. This assessment will allow PARIS21 to tailor the support to countries, and measure the progress made over time.

A.2 Support to countries for NSDS design

Support to countries for designing an NSDS will be provided through the organisation of regional workshops to promote, initiate, present methods, share experiences and report on NSDS development.

The countries will be organised into several zones: Africa, Latin America, Caribbean and Pacific Islands, Asia, Arab States and Europe. Regional workshops will be organised in close collaboration with relevant regional institutions such as for Asean countries, UNESCAP, SIAP, The Asian Development Bank … The objective of these workshop is to support countries at every key step in the design of their strategies such as for (i) initiating and launching (establishment of a road map), (ii) after the evaluation and vision setting, (iii) establishment of action plans; etc. They will follow the preparation of NSDS and respond to country needs.

Other actions such as facilitating peer reviews, organising advisory services and any other facility which could benefit the south–south cooperation will be developed.

A.3 Support to countries for NSDS implementation

Once the countries have adopted a strategy for the development of their statistical system, activities will aim to facilitate the funding of the action plans defined by the national strategies, to contribute to the organisation of the support from other international and regional institutions to the implementation, and to report on progress made and constraints faced.

B – Regional Support

B.1 Support to NSDS Methodology: methods, tools, task teams

Methodological work related to NSDS includes development of guidelines and reference papers, collection of best practices, development of training materials, and periodical review and update of NSDS related methods. It implies a close collaboration with the key organisations involved in the development of statistics such as UNSD, IMF, the World Bank, OECD, EUROSTAT, etc. as well as with National Statistical Offices, and regional organisations.

PARIS21 offers a “less-formal” and open space to discuss and propose solutions to specific issues related to the development of statistics. The task team approach favoured during the first phase of the programme has been successful in light of the progresses made (e.g., the development of indicators for the measure of statistical capacity, the proposal for a regional project on “strengthening Agricultural Statistics for Poverty Reduction and Food Security in Rural Africa”). It is therefore proposed to establish three new task teams, the first one dealing with training in statistics, the second with the costing and financing of statistical activities, and the third with multi-sectoral data for decentralized governance and local accountability.

B. 2 Support to advocacy

The need for effective advocacy for statistics is as important and necessary now as it was in 1999 at the launch of PARIS21. The programme will focus on the development of a strategy for advocating the use of statistics and the strengthening of national statistical capacity within the framework of NSDS, the production of advocacy material and the implementation both advocating directly for statistics at the international and regional level and transferring advocacy skills and materials to the managers of national and regional statistical systems.

B. 3 Donor coordination, partnership and information exchange.

PARIS21 is well placed to facilitate partnership and information exchange and to encourage coordination among donors. The secretariat will put together a summary of statistical assistance programmes carried out by bilateral, regional, and multilateral development agencies, set up an information sharing process among donors to help avoid duplication and to harmonise and increase effectiveness of their support to statistical activities at the country level. This sensitive topic will be on one side discussed during “light meetings” organised by the main regional organisations and on another side will be the main subject of a general donor meeting organised to review current assistance programmes and improve programme responsiveness towards national statistical development needs.

B. 4 Reporting

The need to report regularly on the use of statistics for development and poverty reduction and on the status and trends of the national statistical system in countries is now more pressing than ever. In addition to the continuation of current activities (PARLISTAT―the Partnership Library of Statistical System Documentation―and the Statistical Capacity Building Indicators), PARIS21 intends to launch the production of a global report on this issue.

2. FINANCIAL ASPECTS

The 2004-2006 PARIS21 work programme was presented to the last Steering Committee in October 2003. The cost for the whole period and for all developing countries is roughly estimated at slightly over 14 million dollars. The PARIS21 programme is financed by voluntary contributions from donors such as the United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands, Germany, the World Bank, the EU, Japan, Switzerland, Sweden, Ireland …..  

This amount represents a small part of the total investment required to build statistical capacity countries. The annual incremental cost (estimated by the World Bank for the Marrakech Round table) over the period 2004-2006 is $ 120 millions for improvements to national statistical systems (excluding decennial population census). Nevertheless, PARIS21 will play an important advocacy, advisory and facilitation role and underpin the returns to this broader overall investment.

CONCLUSION

Over the past three years, substantial progress has been made in meeting the data and reporting challenge of the global development effort in the first quarter of the twenty-first century. An effective development model, which brings together both users and providers of statistics and which puts developing countries at the centre, has been developed and piloted. A broad network of the key stakeholders has been established and a substantial amount of experience and expertise has been built up. There is also widespread agreement that the problems that PARIS21 was set up to address are even more sensitive today that they were in 1999. The political priority given to MDGs constitutes an historical opportunity to gain financial support to develop the National Statistical Systems in a sustainable way. The results agenda and the Marrakech Action Plan for Statistics reaffirm clearly this orientation of what needs to be done. By making use of an increasingly receptive and supportive international environment, much can be achieved for a relatively limited outlay. A renewed and enhanced effort is still required if the data challenges of the global monitoring and results agenda are to be met in time.