New targets and new indicators to monitor the MDGs

In September 2000, over 150 world leaders signed the Millennium Declaration and committed themselves to achieve by 2015 a series of goals that came to be known as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The MDGs summarize the key development goals embraced by the main international conferences and world summits during the 1990s.

The MDGs and related targets and indicators provide developing countries and the international community with a framework for planning policy interventions and benchmarks for monitoring progress in reducing the many dimensions of economic and social poverty. All countries face exact targets to achieve, which in most cases are dependent of what were their specific conditions back in 1990.

In these seven years the MDGs have soon become the overarching objective of all UN agencies and funds. They have also progressively reached the top of the policy agenda in many developing countries, being mainstreamed into their national development plans. Perhaps the greatest merit of the MDG framework is the pressure put on Governments, even those without a solid tradition of accountability, to demonstrate to their citizens, and to the international community at large, their commitment and efforts to work towards this shared vision.

Since their adoption the MDGs have also been the subject of discussions and controversies. Many have pointed out that some important economic and social rights are not adequately incorporated in the eight goals. Others have stressed that, being the targets set on the basis of global trends, they are often not achievable, especially in less developed countries, and that "global targets should be tailored to make them context-sensitive". Some have gone even further in saying that the MDGs are distorting the national development policy agenda.

From the statistical point of view, the process that led to the identification of the indicators to monitor the MDGs has been criticized as being too centralized. Moreover, many developing countries have emphasized that this new framework placed an additional burden on National Statistical Systems, in many cases conflicting with national statistical needs and diverting scarce resources from other priorities. As a result, country data on MDG indicators are often not of good quality or are simply not available. This situation has led international agencies to estimate country values in order to fill in the data gaps.

The growing criticism within the statistical community has culminated in the adoption, during the 37th UN Statistical Commission, of a draft resolution on "Strengthening Statistical Capacity", which was endorsed in July 2006 by the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). This resolution recognized that the reporting mechanism from national to international statistical systems should be improved; it agreed that statistical capacity building efforts from the United Nations system should be intensified; it recommended that international agencies should make country-level estimates only in the absence of country data, using a fully transparent methodology and only after having consulted with the concerned countries; and requested the International Agencies to further improve the metadata information accompanying the MDG indicators.

Consequently, the Inter-agency and Expert Group (IAEG), having identified the priorities of national governments with regards to MDG related statistics, has increasingly supported capacity building initiatives and has worked together with international statistical agencies to improve the metadata on MDG indicators.

The implementation of the Millennium Declaration was reviewed at the September 2005 World Summit and world leaders further agreed to several other important targets. One year later, Kofi Annan's tenth and last annual report on the work of the organization (Report to the General Assembly, September 2006) recommended the incorporation of these commitments into the existing MDG framework. The new targets were: Target 1bis (Goal 1): To achieve the goal of full and productive employment and decent work for all by 2015. The existing target on developing decent and productive work for youth, now under MDG 8, would be encompassed by the new target.

• Target 6bis (Goal 5): To achieve universal access to reproductive health by 2015.
• Target 7bis (Goal 6): To achieve universal access to treatment for HIV AIDS by 2010.
• Target 9bis (Goal 7): To significantly reduce the loss of bio-diversity by 2010.

Technical work for the selection of the appropriate indicators to monitor the new targets was undertaken in the following months by the IAEG, on MDG Indicators. In March 2007 the IAEG adopted a new framework for tracking MDG progress, adding new indicators to address the four supplementary targets proposed by the SG and amending the list of existing MDG indicators (The revised MDG framework, including all recommended changes to targets and indicators' list, is presented in the Annex of this article).

Based on the experience gained over the last five years of work; the concerns raised at the 37th session of the UN Statistical Commission and the related ECOSOC resolution on capacity building, as well as the recommendations included in the Report of the Friends of the Chair on MDGs Indicators (FOC Report), the IAEG has established a set of key rules for the selection of the new indicators. The main criteria used were:

• The indicator and related metadata need to be well established in the statistical community (see FOC report, paragraph 16b).
• The indicator should already be part, to the extent possible, of the regular data collection and compilation programmes in countries (see FOC report, paragraph 16a).
• Available data and geographical coverage should allow for regional/sub-regional aggregation and trend analysis (at least two points in time).

The IAEG also reviewed the proposals made by the responsible agencies for some adjustments to the existing indicators. The recommended changes addressed the need to reword their titles, when these were not clear or did not reflect the exact content of the data series, and to eliminate or replace data series when data coverage was insufficient.

Now that the IAEG has completed the technical work, the revised MDG Framework will be submitted to the intergovernmental process in order to ensure full participation and ownership by the countries in the adoption of the new MDG indicators. At the 39th session of the UN Statistical Commission (UNSC) in February next year, representatives of both developing and developed countries will have the chance to review the new list of MDG indicators and have a final word in their adoption. Until then the revised MDG framework will not be used in monitoring MDG progress in the global and regional MDG Reports.

ESCAP Statistics Division will facilitate a consultation among all countries from the Asia-Pacific region on this topic as well as on the other items under discussion at the next UNSC, in order to promote the active participation of the delegations from our region and the formation of common regional stance.

We will address in detail each of these new targets and its corresponding indicators in the upcoming issues of this newsletter.

The global UNDP-funded Statistical Literacy Project was kick-started in Asia and the Pacific region with the Training of Trainers (ToT) workshop in December 2006. Ten-member teams from Cambodia, Pakistan and Viet Nam were trained in ESCAP Conference Center in Bangkok. The first part of the course focused on i) design and policy implications of MDGs; (ii) construction and application of MDG indicators; (iii) basic statistical concepts, e.g. standard error, sampling bias and confidence interval and (iv) DevInfo 5.0 User module. The second component of the Workshop focused on (i) training planning and organization; (ii) customization of global Workshop materials and (iii) effective lecturing and presentation skills.

Over the last few months, the Cambodian trainers have worked hard to improve and develop the training plan they prepared during the ToT, to customize the global Statistical Literacy materials and to translate the documents into Khmer. The first national workshop was held with the support of the World Bank and UNDP, on 20 June in Phnom Penh for about 40 participants, nearly 25 senior officials from line ministries. This one-day workshop aimed to start the national roll-out in the country by introducing the main elements of Statistical Literacy programmes to raise awareness among the senior policy makers. The first half of the workshop was dedicated to MDGs indicators, policy making and monitoring processes and the NSDP. In the second half, CamInfo 3.0 (local DevInfo database) was introduced and the user module was demonstrated.

In addition, Statistical Literacy team, supported by the World Bank, has joined hands with UNICEF and GTZ in order to valuate the synergies between Statistical Literacy and the provincial CamInfo training workshops organized by UNICEF and GTZ. On 25-28 June, the first four-day workshop for technical officials from five provinces (including the capital) was held in Phnom Penh. Two days of the workshop was dedicated to Statistical Literacy lectures and the remaining two focused on practical sessions with CamInfo version 3.0. Four more such training workshops, where four technical staff from four/five provinces are brought together will be organized as to cover all the provinces over the next few months.

The hard work of the trainers and collaboration of UNDP, World Bank and UNICEF have been indispensable for the achievements in Cambodia. We hope that the Cambodian case will inspire the other countries involved in the Statistical Literacy Project in the region and elsewhere!

For further information contact Zeynep Orhun, at orhun@un.org

The Sixth Management Seminar for the Heads of National Statistical Offices (NSOs) in Asia and the Pacific, jointly organized by the Statistical Institute for Asia and the Pacific (SIAP) and the Census and Statistics Department (C&SD), Hong Kong, China in collaboration with the Statistics Division of the United Nations, took place during 28-30 May, 2007 in Hong Kong. The seminar deliberated on the theme: 'Managing Statistical Development and Information Technology for National Statistical Offices'. Forty officials from thirty one countries and three from international organizations participated. This year marks the 40th anniversary for the C&SD of Hong Kong - the seminar's host - for which the vent also coincided with the Department's anniversary celebration.

The objectives of the seminar were setout as: (i) to strengthen capability in the area of leadership and management in statistics with a view to enhancing statistical capacities in support of economic and social development and (ii) to provide an opportunity to discuss, to exchange views and to share experiences in managing information technology for national statistical offices in support of statistical development.

The seminar served as a forum for the heads of the NSOs in the region to exchange views and experiences in dealing with challenges and opportunities arising from national and global goals relating to managing statistical development and information technology. Discussions were structured in four modules encouraging participants to think and offer views on the following questions in separate sessions:

1. What are the key issues in managing and utilizing IT as a strategic resource for NSOs?
2. How can IT be used to improve services provided by NSOs?
3. How to manage IT efficiently - evaluation of the effectiveness of IT investment and expenses - and how should IT resources be organized and managed?
4. How to manage IT efficiently for project management, for example for the population and housing censuses?

Mr Dennis Trewin, former Australian Statistician and SIAP resource person for the seminar, facilitated all the sessions and made presentations on key issues in managing and utilizing IT as a strategic resource for NSOs and on an approach to 'good project management'. Country papers on the theme were provided by all delegations, while five NSO delegations, Australia, Hong Kong, India, Islamic Republic of Iran and New Zealand, each gave presentations on country experiences relevant to specific sessions.

Ten important issues in relation to managing statistical development and information technology for the NSOs were identified at the seminar: (i) organizational models, (ii) alignment between ICT and business areas, (iii) strategic planning, (iv) hardware and software management, (v) knowledge management, (vi) outsourcing or partnering, (vii) project management, (viii) change management, (ix) management of human resources, and (x) disaster recovery. For project management, a consensus emerged that while poor project management is the main cause of project failures, good project management requires (i) attention from top level management, (ii) agreed governance arrangements, (iii) effective risk analysis in guiding discovery, (iv) avoidance of untried technology, (v) end user involvement, and (vi) an agreed framework for managing projects.

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 25 June 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 Pietro Gennari, Director, Statistical Division.

Geneva, Switzerland, 14-15 June: To represent ESCAP at the Second Meeting of the SPECA Project Working Group Meeting on Statistics. The Meeting, which gathers the Chief Statisticians of the SPECA member countries (Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan), discussed the implementation of different activities in the field of statistics, with a special focus on the 2010 Round of population and housing censuses, non-observed economy, migration and donor activities. Materials from the meeting can be found at the website: http://www.unece.org/stats/documents/2007.06.speca.htm.

Mr Ilpo Survo, Chief, Statistical Information Services Section.

Astana, Kazakhstan, 4-8 June: To participate in (i) the Joint UNECE/Eurostat meeting on population and housing censuses, 4-6 June, http://www.unece.org/stats/documents/2007.06.census.htm, and act as resource person at (ii) UNECE Training Workshop on Census Technology for SPECA member countries, 7-8 June, http://www.unece.org/stats/documents/2007.06.census3.htm. Parallel to the latter meeting, UNECE organized (iii) the Expert Group Meeting on the implementation of the CES Recommendations for register-based censuses, http://www.unece.org/stats/documents/2007.06.census2.htm.

The first meeting focused on census planning and management, census technology, and outsourcing. Quality control was a leading theme for both the register-based statistics and outsourcing. The increasing role of metadata, dissemination of microdata, and the attachment of location coordinates to house and enterprise addresses were other repeatedly discussed themes. In the Training Workshop, Mr Survo covered topics on dissemination technologies for population and housing censuses, documenting and disseminating census and survey data sets, and modalities for exchanging census IT expertise in the region.

Ms Zeynep Orhun, Associate Statistician, Statistical Information Services Section.

Phnom Penh, Cambodia, 19-20 June: To represent United Nations ESCAP in the first national Statistical Literacy workshop,"Statistical Literacy for MDG Policy Management in Cambodia" and to confirm arrangements for the five provincial technical training workshops which will be organized by the World Bank, UNICEF and GTZ over the summer 2007.

• Mr Shahidur R. Khandker, Lead Economist, Development Research Group, World Bank.
• Ms Chalermkwun Chiemprachanarakorn, Senior Socio-Economic Statistician, National Statistical Office, Bangkok.
• Mr Reshma Kishnani, Programme Associate, UN Millennium Team.
• Ms Ryce Chanchai, Policy Associate, Asia, UN Millennium Team.