E/ESCAP/STAT.11/9
28 October 1998
ORIGINAL: ENGLISH

ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL COMMISSION FOR ASIA AND THE PACIFIC

Committee on Statistics
Eleventh session
24-26 November 1998
Bangkok

I.   BACKGROUND

1.    The subject of technical cooperation in statistics has been regularly on the agenda of the United Nations Statistical Commission, and clearly the topic is of interest to both developing and developed member countries.  In the 1980s, the Statistical Commission, along with its Working Group on International Statistical Programmes and Coordination and the Administrative Committee on Coordination's Subcommittee on Statistical Activities, grappled with the topic of assessing the effectiveness of technical cooperation in statistics.  In 1989, the Commission endorsed some strategies as useful guides for both multilateral and bilateral technical cooperation in statistics.  At the same time, it noted a number of significant difficulties and limitations in assessing the impact of technical cooperation.¹

2.    At subsequent sessions of the Statistical Commission, the discussions have focused on the volume of technical cooperation rendered.  The documentation for the item has usually been based on financial and other information supplied by various international agencies, and the United Nations Statistics Division, as collator of the information, consistently reported problems in presenting coherent, comparable data to the Commission.  This tended to make the Commission's discussions inconclusive, since it was sometimes difficult to discern even the main trends in the amount of technical cooperation implemented.

3.    The twenty-ninth session of the Statistical Commission in 1997 represented a departure from previous practice in that it was decided to discuss technical cooperation in detail and in a qualitative rather than quantitative sense.  A group of country and agency experts was designated by the Commission to examine the topic, and two meetings were convened by Statistics Netherlands of the Workshop on Improving Technical Cooperation in Statistics.  The meetings resulted in a report and a first draft of a set of guiding principles or recommendations for good practices in technical cooperation in statistics.  The draft was presented for further discussion by the Statistical Commission's Working Group on International Statistical Programmes and Cooperation in February 1998.  The report and draft guiding principles are also being presented to the statistical conferences of the regional commissions for comments, and will thereafter be considered by the Statistical Commission at its thirtieth session in March 1999.

4.    The summary report of the Workshop on Improving Technical Cooperation in Statistics, by reason mainly of its length, has been distributed separately to all statistical offices in the region as a background paper for the Committee on Statistics.  It is considered essential reading for the agenda item, however, and indeed is intended for discussion by a wide audience.  It contains the first draft of a set of guiding principles.

5.    The present paper contains a revised set of draft guiding principles for good practices in technical cooperation in statistics, together with its annex containing checklists of specific measures or issues to be considered in the design and implementation of technical cooperation programmes.  The guiding principles and the checklists have been somewhat recast from earlier drafts.  In the hope of assisting the Committee in its deliberations, the secretariat feels it useful to describe briefly the types and attributes of technical cooperation commonly practised in the region at present, and then to present a few selected, general reflections on the subject.

II. TECHNICAL COOPERATION IN THE REGION

A. Types of technical cooperation in statistics commonly practised in the ESCAP region

1. Training

6.    Statistical offices in the countries of the region have training units or programmes to develop the manpower of statistical agencies in central and local governments.  To some extent, a limited number of training opportunities are made available to other countries in the region.

7.    Training institutes at the regional and international levels provide statistical training programmes for countries in the region (for example, the Statistical Institute for Asia and the Pacific, the International Statistical Institute, the IMF Institute).

2. Meetings and workshops

8.    Meetings are convened and workshops are conducted to provide a venue for sharing experiences and discussing various statistical issues affecting the countries.  These meetings and workshops also facilitate the reaching of agreements on approaches for addressing problems and issues.

3. Advisory/consultancy services

9.    Advisory/consultancy services are provided by bilateral and multilateral agencies (for example, ESCAP, the United Nations Development Programme, the Japan International Cooperation Agency) upon the request of government/statistical agencies in various statistical areas.  There are, however, only a limited number of fields in which these advisory/consultancy services are available.

4. Technical assistance projects

10.    Several bilateral and multilateral agencies implement technical assistance projects in countries in the region.  These projects range from the conduct of specific statistical enquiries or studies, to projects designed to strengthen statistical institutions.

11.    Modalities in implementing these technical assistance projects vary by project, by country and by funding agency.  Some are based on the perspective of the funding agencies and, in many cases, to fill data gaps in areas of concern to those agencies.  Others provide the country with sufficient flexibility within the mandated area of the funding agencies (for example, poverty, women, environment, children).  For a few technical assistance projects, the areas are based on the priority topics of the statistical agencies in the countries.

B.   Emerging trends in technical cooperation in the region

12.    With the improving statistical capability of statistical agencies in many countries in the region, these agencies have more confidence in identifying their needs and priorities and in taking command and ownership of the activities of technical assistance projects.

13.    While statistical agencies conduct externally funded projects which are not among their identified priority areas, they try to maximize the benefit of these activities to improve the skills of their staff and deepen the experience of the office in the conduct of these types of activity.

14.    With the heterogeneity of countries in the region, technical assistance projects have increasingly utilized the approach of exchange visits and in-service training programmes.

15.    Convergence and collaboration among bilateral and multilateral agencies have been improved.

C. Continuing issues in technical cooperation in the region

16.    In some cases, participants sent by countries on international training programmes are not those who can best benefit from the programme.

17.    Some technical assistance projects making use of consultancy services from the private sector do not ensure that the skills are acquired by the staff of the agency that is being provided with assistance; when the technical assistance project closes, the activities of the project are not sustained because the staff do not have the needed expertise.

18.    The absorptive capacity of the receiving agency is limited and it has difficulty undertaking, much less continuing, the activity of the project.

III.   SELECTED COMMENTS ON THE DRAFT GUIDING PRINCIPLES

19.    As indicated earlier, the draft guiding principles need to be read in close conjunction with the summary report of the Workshop on Improving Technical Cooperation in Statistics.  In fact, no doubt in the considerable effort to distil their essence, the draft guiding principles appear in places rather vague and cryptic without reference to the summary report.  That aside, however, the draft guiding principles represent, in the secretariat's view, a very sound set of principles for the implementation of technical cooperation.  They describe, as any text on good practices must, very much of an ideal situation or scenario which only rarely could be expected to be fully realized in practice.  A possible consequence in this regard is that urgently needed technical cooperation might not proceed while the preparatory steps are being initiated: while the parties are satisfying themselves that the suggested criteria for good practice are being met, while the preconditions for cooperation to be effective are being verified, and so forth.  In practice, countries which by some criteria may be seen to be most in need of technical cooperation in statistics may also be those least able to provide the recipient enabling framework that is described in the guiding principles.  Perhaps the key criterion to be emphasized in this regard is that of flexibility: the need to take account of local situations, policy environments and stage of statistical development.

20.    A linked question is the practical difficulty, in many instances, of ensuring that criteria are met and preconditions satisfied.  To take only one example, few national authorities would openly commit to less than adequate support for their statistical service; but the expression of that support in practical terms can be subject to wide interpretation.  Similarly, adequate and motivated staff may well be available at the commencement of the project, but in many circumstances their continued availability cannot be guaranteed.  Apart from any other factor, swingeing budget cuts for statistical services such as are now being witnessed in many Asian countries in financial crisis can significantly affect the ability of recipient countries to continue their commitments to the success of technical cooperation programmes.

21.    There can be, in the secretariat's view, little argument with the main goals and success criteria for technical cooperation outlined in section IV of the draft guiding principles.  Historically, as the summary report suggests, the third of these, "the ability to sustain and develop statistical systems and capabilities", has been the most elusive.  There are many instances where all traces of a technical assistance project have disappeared.  Wisely (at least in the light of past experience), the success criteria do not include improvements in economic and social conditions that might to some extent be credited to improvements in statistics, a criterion that was earlier found to resist even the most simple impact assessments.

22.    Running through the text of both the draft guiding principles and the summary report are references to many desirable practice (the commitment of national authorities to statistical work, the appropriateness of the legal and institutional setting, the importance of a producer-user dialogue, awareness of the fundamental principles of official statistics, the existence of a strategic framework for statistical development, and several others) which in fact are common desiderata for any well-functioning statistical service, whether or not they are the recipient (or provider) of technical cooperation.  In this sense the guiding principles are particularly valuable in that they reinforce the concepts of good practices in official statistics as a whole, a topic that is for consideration under the same item of the Committee's provisional agenda.

23.    The summary report discusses in some detail a typology of technical cooperation models and, while care is taken to define the word "project" very broadly, the emphasis in the report and the guiding principles is perhaps on larger, longer-term programmes.  Many of the technical cooperation activities of ESCAP are of a distinctly smaller nature: a one-off workshop or seminar on a specific field of statistics, for instance; or an advisory mission which, even though delivered within a regional framework, is tailored to a particular country and may cost less than US$ 5,000, staff time included.  These technical assistance actions, which are by no means unique to ESCAP, are (or are at least intended to be) contributing to the long-term development of national statistical capabilities, but it appears difficult, if not artificial, to apply the full range of suggested practices and criteria to each individual action.  That is not to say that small-scale technical assistance actions should be in some way "exempt" from the criteria applied to large-scale projects, but a degree of flexibility and common sense in their application seems warranted.

24.    A related point refers to the efforts expended on monitoring and evaluation, and the guiding principles state, correctly in the secretariat's view, that they should be appropriate to the size, duration and nature of the project.  The same also goes for the amount of time and resources spent on the design and use of conceptual frameworks, which should not be over-elaborate or out of proportion to the scale of the project.

25.    The importance of coordination between different parts of the national statistical system (and on occasion between branches of the statistical office) and between different donors can hardly be overemphasized.  As pointed out, the recipient national statistical system should ideally play the key role in the coordination process, but this is not always easy in smaller countries, or in those with decentralized systems where donors are working with different agencies.

26.    Two other issues, among many additional specific comments that might be made, deserve mention.  One is that a number of statistical projects, probably an increasing number, are not stand-alone but are a component of a larger assistance project covering many sectors.  Although this would not invalidate the guiding principles, it might make their application more complicated.  The second relates to evaluation of technical cooperation projects.  It is not altogether certain whether much progress has been made in evaluation methodology in order that the impact of a particular project, or even of the sum of technical cooperation in statistics in a given country, can be isolated from the host of other factors impinging on statistical outputs, capability and systems sustainability; very frequently, such factors arise from outside the statistical system and are difficult to take account of in project design, let alone implementation.

27.    In conclusion, the secretariat feels that awareness of a set of good practices in technical cooperation, even in situations where those practices cannot yet be fully implemented, will help to ensure the rational execution of technical assistance activities and assist in optimizing available resources.

28.    The Committee is requested to provide its views on the draft guiding principles for good practices in technical cooperation in statistics, as input for discussion of the topic at the United Nations Statistical Commission in March 1999.

SOME GUIDING PRINCIPLES FOR GOOD PRACTICES IN TECHNICAL COOPERATION FOR STATISTICS

I.    Introduction

1.    At its twenty-ninth session (New York, 11 to 14 February 1997), the Statistical Commission decided that the topic of technical cooperation should be discussed in detail in separate meetings. Accordingly, in April and September 1997, Statistics Netherlands convened two meetings of the Workshop on Improving Technical Cooperation in Statistics at Voorburg, Netherlands, at which a number of papers and contributions were considered.  On the basis of those papers and the discussions held, a detailed report was prepared, together with the present document, which has been considered by the regional commissions in 1997-1998.  It has been amended to take account of comments and is now presented to the Statistical Commission for further discussion with a view to agreeing on guiding principles for technical cooperation in statistics.

2.    Technical cooperation for statistics comprises the exchange and development of know-how and technical expertise in order to build capacities to produce and use statistics.  The scope of technical cooperation activities is wide, ranging from informal contacts in international working groups and meetings to in-depth programmes to improve statistics.  To be successful it needs to be undertaken as a partnership between the various involved organizations, who should share common goals.

3.    The guiding principles (or recommendations) set out below are based on the broad consensus reached by the Workshop on Improving Technical Cooperation in Statistics and subsequent consultations.  They contain a number of recommendations for improving technical cooperation within a partnership, but the set does not pretend to be exhaustive on this point.  An annex provides checklists for more detailed consideration.

4.    The guiding principles should help partners in the technical cooperation process to create models following the best possible practices of technical cooperation.  They also aim to encourage countries to make optimal use of statistics and commit themselves to improving the national statistical system; for instance by guaranteeing the availability of adequate staff, equipment, management and other resources and by allowing professional independence.

II.   Good practice for technical cooperation

5.    The following are suggested criteria for good practice.  Technical cooperation should:

1. Be demand-led, based on assessments of user requirements and relative priorities, including national, regional and international needs;
2. Be set within a well-balanced overall strategic framework and work programme for national statistical development;
3. Consider human and other resource development strategies, and organizational and institutional development needs, as well as technical work areas;
4. Be flexible and take account of local situations, culture, language, policy environments and stage of statistical development;
5. Ensure both government and donor commitment and complement national resources, while empowering recipient national statistical systems and governments to take the lead;
6. Address the needs of regional groupings of countries where a common approach can be effective, while recognizing that the heterogeneity of countries means that they have many different needs and priorities, even when producing similar outputs.  Regional technical cooperation programmes might support cooperation between and/or within regional groupings;
7. Be well designed, for instance by using logical framework approaches, including specifying objectives and success criteria in advance, and considering wider issues beyond the immediate scope of an individual project;
8. Promote full participation and address the concerns of all main stakeholders;
9. Be implemented according to professional standards using the most appropriate model of cooperation (that is, single or multiple donors working with single countries or regional groups either independently or in joint ventures);
10. Be implemented using a structured approach, possibly with reference to some form of conceptual framework;
11. Integrate staff training in a way that optimizes its effect on the objectives of the project;
12. Use appropriate monitoring and evaluation mechanisms to facilitate effective project implementation, exchange of experience and lesson learning;
13. Be coordinated between donors and between different players in the national statistical system in a proactive way to avoid duplication of effort and encourage complementarity and synergy;
14. Recognize that developing a statistical system can take a long time.

III.   General policy considerations

6.    The following general policy aspects are relevant to the consideration of technical cooperation for statistics:

1. It is the task of the national statistical system to make available to government, the public and the private sector relevant and reliable statistical information for economic, social, cultural and environmental developments in a country;
2. A more precise formulation of the type, frequency and coverage of information to be produced should result from a balanced dialogue between users and producers;
3. Both producers and users of statistical information should play an active role in the formulation of the statistical work programme;
4. The partners in technical cooperation need to be committed to the programmes and processes being developed;
5. The importance of national statistics needs to be recognized by national authorities, for instance by supporting
   • A workable legal and institutional setting
   • Adequate and motivated staf
   • Basic accommodation, software and equipment
   • A commitment to good management practices
   • Awareness of the fundamental principles of official statistics

IV.   Goals and success criteria for technical cooperation

7.    Different partners involved in technical cooperation typically have different goals and therefore different criteria for judging the success of technical cooperation.  However, the design of technical cooperation projects should involve all main stakeholders and should identify common, possibly multiple, goals.  Success can be measured in terms of progress towards these wider goals, as well as by the achievement of intermediate goals and more specific targets.

8.    The following main goals have been identified:

1. Increased and better use of better statistics in key areas in order to provide the basis for policy, planning, decision-making and the monitoring of social, economic and environmental development and investment decisions;
2. Increased statistical capacity and capabilities to produce statistics in priority areas, and the production of such statistics;
3. The ability to sustain and develop systems and capabilities in the longer term.

V.   Checklists of specific measures or issues to be considered in the design and implementation of technical cooperation programmes

9.    The Workshop on Improving Technical Cooperation in Statistics discussed various issues related to the design and implementation of cooperation programmes.  These included mechanisms for identifying and prioritizing user needs and strategic approaches for the development and delivery of work programmes, key aspects of project design, cooperation models and conceptual frameworks and factors that influence implementation.  Checklists on these are attached as an annex to the present document.

VI.   Monitoring and evaluation

10.    The purpose of monitoring is to check on progress during implementation in order to identify any problems and adjust the project accordingly.  It also assesses project progress towards the intermediate and final objectives, and provides an opportunity for dialogue.

11.    Evaluation at the end of a project should aid lesson learning and exchange of experience between projects and countries.  It can consider project impact (for instance, in relation to use of statistics), outputs achieved (relevance, quality, accessibility) and/or inputs (efficiency and effectiveness), and sustainability (of systems put in place and capabilities developed).

12.    The scale of monitoring and evaluation mechanisms should be appropriate to the size, duration and nature of the project.

13.    Evaluations are normally best carried out by independent but knowledgeable experts.

14.    Monitoring during project implementation is normally conducted through self-assessment by project partners.

VII.   Coordination

15.    Coordination is needed to avoid conflicting projects, to seek synergy and to create optimal conditions for working together in partnerships, and is best achieved by:

1. The recipient national statistical system playing the key role in the coordination process;
2. Making explicit which objectives, values and methods are shared by the partners involved;
3. Establishing the exchange and sharing of information among the relevant partners;
4. Coordinating the work of regional or subject matter working groups to ensure the exchange of information;
5. Extending the exchange of information within national statistical services to all relevant organizations, including the Central Bank and the Ministry of Finance;
6. Making coordination proactive to promote the design of joint or complementary projects and activities involving different partners.

Annex

CHECKLISTS OF SPECIFIC MEASURES OR ISSUES TO BE CONSIDERED IN THE DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF TECHNICAL COOPERATION PROGRAMMES

A.   Design issues

1.    A suggested checklist of specific measures or issues to be considered is set out below:

User needs and priorities

1. Identify needs of key users and determine priorities;
2. Establish mechanisms to decide between priorities and resolve conflicts;
3. Ensure that international needs and the advantages of harmonized statistical outputs do not override national needs;
4. Establish constructive dialogue with users and organizations funding statistical programmes; user-producer and/or statistical advisory committees can assist in such processes;

Statistical work programme and resource needs

5. Establish statistical work programmes and strategies to guide the allocation of resources;
6. Define outputs, activities, inputs and resource gaps;

Strategies for delivery of work programmes

7. Formulate human resource development strategies;
8. Formulate information systems and dissemination strategies;
9. Consider legal status and formulate organizational and communication strategies;

Logical framework approach

10. Link inputs to the associated activities that deliver the outputs and the immediate and final objectives of technical cooperation;
11. Establish indicators of success and monitoring mechanisms at the outset, together with an assessment of external factors affecting a project, especially the risk factors that could prevent the project from meeting its objectives;
12. Ensure that the means of monitoring and evaluation are agreed jointly by the main stakeholders; Role of technical cooperation
13. Ensure that it complements national resources and commitments;
14. Ensure that it is time-bound, with realistic "exit" strategies;
15. Ensure that it supports national statistical development plans and associated strategies;
16. Ensure that it is led and coordinated by recipient/partner national statistical institutions and governments;
17. Bear in mind that the role of technical experts is to advise and assist, and to share skills, information and experience with partners.

B.   Cooperation models and conceptual frameworks for implementationp

2.    Different kinds of cooperation models should be examined to select the most appropriate model; for example, models could be based on the needs of:

1. A single country with one or more donors, working either independently or in joint ventures;
2. A group of countries (regional approach) with one or more donor/provider partners, working either independently or in joint ventures;
3. Any combination of recipient countries and/or groups of countries with one or more donors, working either independently or in joint ventures.

3.    Conceptual frameworks can be designed by using several dimensions, with which a series of matrices or cubes can be constructed.  In this approach each matrix represents a certain part of the statistical system, for instance using a three-dimensional approach:

1. One dimension represents the different statistical surveys that are related to a specific field, like enterprise statistics;
2. A second dimension can be formed by the detailed structure of the statistical production process that is relevant for that specific field.  The structure can present different options for methodological solutions;
3. These kinds of matrices can be constructed for the fields of automation, general business register, social statistics, enterprise statistics, national accounts and policy matters;
4. Each cell or a number of cells of these matrices refers to the possible content of one or more actions in the field of technical cooperation;
5. The third dimension that can be added to these matrices is the number of countries that participate in a regional project.  It shows which kind of actions, on the basis of their content, can be useful for several countries.

C.   Checklist of factors that influence the implementation process

4.    A checklist of factors that influence the implementation process is set out below:

Factors affecting absorption capacity

1. Draft a contract to formalize the intended inputs by all partners in the technical cooperation process;
2. Adopt a flexible approach in order to adapt to changing circumstances;
3. Draft intermediate outputs to provide relevant project documentation;
4. Develop and use supporting tools and disseminate them throughout the organization;
5. Give continued attention to the user-producer dialogue;
6. Make internal coordination a priority in order to stimulate the involvement of the rest of the organization;
7. Create internal working groups to support the process of internal coordination;
8. Give constant attention to institutional and organizational developments which support sustainability of project achievements;

Factors that affect inputs by the various partners

9. Make institutional responsibility for technical cooperation a part of the contract so as to strengthen the professional basis for the partnership in technical cooperation;
10. Ensure long-term commitment when donors need to be deeply involved;
11. Ensure adequate quality of staff;
12. Ensure flexibility from the input side;
13. Avoid hierarchical communications;
14. Make empathy and understanding culture a priority in view of the need for acceptability;
15. Bear in mind that speaking the language and a positive atmosphere make communication much easier;
16. Ensure that the delivery of inputs meets the timetable for the process;
17. Support professionalism by providing clear project management without an excess of managers;
18. Ensure adequate training programmes that target correct staff and focus on short practical training where appropriate;
19. Use regional approaches, either to exchange information between recipients or as a form of cooperation, in a responsible way;
20. Use e-mail and other communication tools to speed up the communication process;

Agreement of partners on taxonomy of projects

21. Ensure that partners agree on the characteristics of the project including size, duration, location(s), financial characteristics, subject, scope, organization and expected results;
22. Ensure that partners agree on the people involved and their status; their familiarity with the culture of the country/organization and language; their level of expertise (specialist or generalist); long-term or short-term status; the kind of equipment and manuals that will be used; and the role of training.  (Advice can be given in a diagnostic way as evaluations or audits.)

¹  See, for example, document E/CN.3/1989/17, paras. 79-92; and report of the Statistical Commission on its twenty-fifth session (Official Records of the Economic and Social Council, 1989, Supplement No. 3) (E/1989/21 - E/CN.3/1989/25, paras. 175-182.