Members and associate members have indicated that ESCAP should make supporting the 2010 round of population and housing censuses in the region a priority. The formal mandate was given at the global level through ECOSOC resolution 2005/13 on the 2010 World Population and Housing Census Programme. ESCAP resolution 62/10 of May 2006 on strengthening statistical capacity in Asia and the Pacific explicitly recalls that mandate.

In November 2006, regional census experts gathered in Bangkok to advise the secretariat on the orientation of the Regional Census Programme (RCP). It was agreed that the RCP should have three components, namely (i) promoting global census principles and recommendations, (ii) building a migration data system around population censuses, and (iii) supporting the effective use of information technology in population censuses.

While it has not yet been possible to identify external funding for the full programme, ESCAP is teaming up with partners and using its regular budget funding to start activities for the third IT-related component of the Programme. Jointly with the United Nations Statistics Division, it has scheduled a regional training workshop on GIS and related technologies for population and housing censuses in Bangkok, tentatively from 15 to 19 October 2007. Practical applications and demonstrations will be included, and special attention will be given to using census technologies for disaster preparedness and management.

All regional statistical and census offices will soon receive a questionnaire from ESCAP. The objective of that survey is to assess country needs for technical assistance and the availability of census skills and expertise that could be shared among ESCAP member countries and associate members through the RCP. To reduce the response burden, relevant information available from previous surveys by ESCAP (2005) and ECE (2004, for Central Asia) have been pre-filled in the respective country questionnaires.

The results of the survey will be reviewed by an Expert Group Meeting (EGM) on effective use of IT in population and housing censuses. It is scheduled from 10 to 12 December, back-to-back with the fourth session of the Committee on Poverty Reduction (12-14 December 2007). The EGM will recommend, among other things, how to effectively exchange expertise among countries in the region in support of their census operations during the 2010 census round. We will be looking forward to your support.

ESCAP is implementing a project, in cooperation with the Accelerated Data Programme (ADP), on microdata management for national statistical agencies in the region. ADP was a result of the Marrakech Action Plan for Statistics (MAPS), and is funded by the World Bank and managed globally by Paris21 (OECD). The project will take advantage of experiences acquired by ADP and the International Household Survey Network (IHSN), also established under MAPS.

Activities are already starting in Bangladesh, Indonesia and Mongolia, while many other countries have expressed interest in the project as well. In May and June 2007, the ESCAP Regional Project Coordinator, Mr Jan Smit, undertook missions to Bangladesh, Indonesia and Mongolia. He briefed the respective statistical offices on the objectives of the project, assessed the national microdata management situation, and identified areas where ESCAP can be of assistance. Training in the use of the IHSN Microdata Management Toolkit was provided as well.

National work programmes for the three above countries are currently being drafted. In the coming months, at least 3-5 additional countries will also become involved in project activities. The scope of assistance for microdata management is broad, including improving methods for data preservation and data quality assurance, archiving and documentation, and dissemination issues such as anonymization techniques and confidentiality policy formulation. Microdata management is a critical topic for national statistical offices as it not only directly impacts the value of outputs from censuses and surveys, but can also contribute to improved planning for future collections and dissemination. ESCAP members each have unique needs for developing microdata management practices, and hence the project will address each country's specific needs with in-country missions, followed with regional seminars to identify common issues and facilitate intra-regional cooperation and exchange of expertise.

Most poor are economically active but have income below the poverty line and working conditions below decent work standards; many do not benefit from social protection or employee rights. The concept of working poor and its measurement has become increasingly important for developing countries. In March 2007, the Interagency Expert Group Meeting elected to make: "Achieve full and productive employment and decent work for all, including women and young people" as a new target, with related indicators, under MDG Goal 1.

A large share of working poor people are employed in the informal sector, but data available to connect employment characteristics of individuals and poverty status of their households are insufficient. On one hand, the situation of poverty in a household is attributed to all its members, regardless of employment status or characteristics of their jobs. On the other hand, employment characteristics of some household members are attributed to the household unit as a whole, and therefore, the poverty risk of informal sector workers living in the household with multiple earners may be under or overestimated. In order to accurately assess income disparities across employment status or characteristics and to fill in the data gaps, data on an individual's employment status needs to be linked to data on the household's poverty status.

The purpose of the project is to link informal sector employment and poverty, using respectively individual micro-data on employment characteristics (from the LFS) and household micro-data on poverty (from the HSES) and to show how statistical matching can solve the lack of direct measurement of the two phenomena.

For the case of this project, HSES data was chosen as the recipient file (A), where X and Y variables (income and expenditure) are observed, and LFS data is used as the donor file (B), where X and Z variables (informal employment status) are observed. Below is a diagram summarizing the main steps of statistical matching:

ESCAP is currently leading the Interregional Cooperation on the Measurement of Informal Sector and Informal Employment Project, where three Asia-Pacific countries are collecting data on informal employment through labor force surveys in the first stage and on informal sector production units through enterprise surveys in the second stage. Poverty and informal sector employment analysis using statistical matching techniques can thus be used in the project countries in ESCAP and other regions once the required data becomes available.

Contact: Ms Zeynep Orhun at orhun@un.org for further details.

The Statistics Division was in Hua Hin, Thailand for a Team Development Retreat from 21 to 23 June 2007 with an objective to increase team spirit and create more open communication among the staff members. The training was facilitated by team building and organizational expert, Mr Jerry Huey. On day one and two, Mr Huey facilitated the retreat with activities that brought focus on perspective taking, team collaboration, management styles, and understanding the dynamic of power. During the final day, staff members addressed topics related to working in a diverse environment and learned about identifying common grounds, respecting differences, developing trust and being aware of emotional intelligence.

From 10 May to 11 July 2007, SIAP conducted the Third Group Training Course in Application of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) of Production and Dissemination of Official Statistics in Tokyo. This is part of the regular Tokyo-based programme, jointly organised by SIAP and Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). Advancements in ICT have been raising the productivity and the operational efficiency of national statistical organizations (NSOs) remarkably, particularly in developed nations. NSOs of the ESCAP region increasingly need to enhance employment of ICT to increase productivity and meet their development agendas. This course aimed to equip participants with knowledge of different aspects of ICT and how it can be applied to all aspects of the operations, especially production and dissemination of data and organization and logistics.

Eighteen participants from seventeen countries participated in this two month long course. The major thrusts of the course focused on key applicable technologies for statistical processes and project work. During the project work, participants were able to utilize software such as CSPro, STATA, Front Page and other applications covered during the course. Participants presented their project outputs and action plans at the end of the training. Following the action plans, participants are expected to act as trainers on their return to their respective NSOs. The broadened spill over of ITC knowledge at NSOs is an important expected accomplishment of this course.

Besides SIAP faculty members, experts from the ESCAP Statistics Division, ESCAP Information, Communication, and Space Technology Division (ICSTD), Australian Bureau of Statistics, Fujitsu, Japan, University of Tokyo and Meisei University contributed to the course. Participants also visited the Statistics Bureau in Tokyo, Japan and attended presentations on price data collection, data capturing and processing for Census 2005 data and demonstrations on hand-held data collection equipment. These inputs gave participants a practical insight into some of the latest advancements used at leading statistical organizations.

A formal evaluation revealed that most participants found the course to be useful and there was high confidence in implementing action plans upon returning home.

Further details are also available on the SIAP website (http://www.unsiap.or.jp).

The list of future events is provided for coordination purposes only. The list is incomplete and events, dates and venues may change. Please do not publish or disseminate the list without confirming the latest information with the Statistics Division or SIAP, as appropriate. Note that not all meetings are intended for all countries.

The following list of future events has been compiled, for coordination purposes only, on the basis of information available to the Statistics Division as of 30 July 2007. Readers are strongly advised to verify the correctness with the indicated organizers. Events, dates and venues may change. Please do not republish or disseminate the list.

• Mr Joel Jere, Statistician, Statistics Development Section

New York, United States, 5-6 July: To participate in the second meeting of the United Nations Committee of Experts on Environmental-Economic Accounting.

The meeting discussed how to approach the revision of the System of integrated Environmental-Economic Accounting (SEEA). Data generated from the SEEA can enable policy makers to formulate appropriate environmental policies.

It was agreed during the meeting that the revision should concentrate on things which are feasible and that the revision should be completed by 2010 or 2011. It also agreed that one way of generating internationally comparable environmental data would be by creating a set of 5 standard tables (similar to SNA) which countries could compile.

Four countries from the region (Australia, China, India and the Philippines) participated in the meeting.

• Ms Haishan Fu, Chief, Statistics Development Section,
• Mr Jan Smit, Consultant,
• Mr Andres Montes, Statistician, Statistics Development Section, and
• Mr Christian Stoff, Associate Statistician, Statistics Information Services Section

Manila, Philippines, 26-28 June: To discuss the preparation of the ESCAP/ADB/UNDP joint 2007 regional progress report and to review the methodologies and preliminary results with ADB staff members from the Regional and Sustainable Development Department, and discuss the programme of the International Conference on the Millennium Development Goal Statistics (ICMDGS) to be held in Manila, Philippines on 1-3 October 2007.

The team also took the opportunity to meet with ADB staff members from the Economics and Research Department separately to exchange information on the ongoing and planned statistical capacity building activities in the region undertaken by the two agencies.

Mr Montes and ADB colleagues also met with the Philippines National Statistical Coordination Board (NCSD) to discuss the organization and structure of the International Conference on the Millennium Development Goal Statistics (ICMDGS) to be held on 1-3 October 2007. ADB and ESCAP agreed to sponsor a limited number of countries interested in attending the conference.

• Mr Marco Di Zio, Senior Statistician, ISTAT - Italian Statistical Office
• Mr Mauro Scanu, Senior Statistician, ISTAT - Italian Statistical Office
• Mr Richard E. Bilsborrow, Economist-Demographer, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
• Mr Claes Johansson, Statistician, UNDP Human Development Report Office, New York