Why statistics? Why NSDS?

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• Why statistics? Why NSDS?
• Presentation by
• PARIS21 Secretariat
• PARIS21/UNESCAP sub-regional workshop on NSDSs
  for South Asian Countries
• Colombo, 13-15 December 2005

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Why now?

• Greater emphasis on evidence and managing for
  results
• Good statistics increasingly recognised as
  essential for PRS and MDG processes
• Opportunity to review data needs and priorities
  for statistical development

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Increased costs of getting it wrong

• Rapid development of policy analysis
• Advances in ICT
• Donor alignment and harmonisation increase costs
  of making faulty policy decisions
• Concerns about aid effectiveness

4
Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness

• Paris Forum (2005) participants included
• 35 donors
• 26 multilaterals
• 56 partner countries
• 14 civil society orgs
• Aim Mutual accountability between donors and
  partner countries to deliver more effective aid

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From donorship to ownership
Development Results
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Statistics needed at all stages of policy cycle

• The need for statistics for monitoring has
  attracted much attention because of PRS and MDG
  monitoring
• But development outcomes are also crucially
  affected by the use of statistics in the
  upstream stages of policy design and
  decision-making
• Achieve issue recognition
• Inform programme design and policy choice
• Forecast the future
• As well as for monitoring and evaluation

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Statistics matter

• Statistics make a real difference to development
  outcomes, examples
• Indian population figures
• Mozambique floods
• Wheat flour ration shops in Pakistan
• Poverty reduction in Mexico

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Why NSDS?

• How can strategic planning help?
• Addressing data limitations
• Prioritising use of resources
• Looking across whole NSS
• Integrating statistics within policy processes
• Providing a robust framework and action plan for
  statistical capacity building
• Acting as a catalyst for change to build
  confidence and break the vicious cycle

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Value added of NSDS approach
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NSDS as a country-levelcoherence framework
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NSDS as a country-levelcoherence framework
National Strategy for the Development of
Statistics
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Making better statistics a reality

• Advocacy for
• better use of better statistics
• NSDSs
• More coherent donor support
• Technical as well as financial assistance
• Guidance, documentation
• Regional programmes