(TA2.10) Building strong National Statistical Systems — The Case of Business (and other) Register Data

• Presentations

• Presentation -- Rasmus Larsson, Benson Karugu Ndungu
• Presentation

The Nordic National Statistical Offices (NSO) have long experience in capacity development and in using administrative registers for statistics production. In this session, these two experiences will be combined: Country examples of capacity development in collaboration and use of administrative sources mostly on businesses for statistical purposes. Increased use of administrative registers can improve coverage and accuracy of the data available. However, the Nordic NSOs acknowledge that setting up a national system of administrative registers and making it accessible to the NSI for statistical use is an ambitious project. It requires long-term commitment, political support and coordination and agreement between a large number of stakeholders. In this relation the Nordic NSIs are happy to share own experiences and work jointly with partners to build stronger systems for such registers. In recent years, the benefits of establishing such ecosystems have been shared many times, but there have not been too many examples of how it can be done. The objective of the session is to provide such practical examples.

In Sudan a high level technical working group was established to discuss business registration. One of the key results of this work was the specification of the need for a common, unique identifier in the national legislation. In Kenya, we have worked together to assess administrative data sources for inclusion in the statistical business register. Working with NSOs has shown that there is need for a technical business register solution. A generic tool which is free of charge is now in development, with Kyrgyzstan as the first statistical office to test it. In Ghana, work with using information from different administrative sources for statistical production is just starting and we can share experiences in gaining political support, tackling various challenges and setting up agreements with line ministries.

Sometimes good intentions do not necessary lead to results, since every country setting is different and the administrative and legal setup can contain unforeseen hurdles to producing statistics based on administrative registers. Some of the challenges encountered and lessons learned will be presented. We will during the session also make an attempt at connecting the examples of work related to business register implementation to the Capacity Development matrix developed under the lead of Paris21. As a preliminary observation we find that approaches that address a wider spectrum of the areas from technical to systemic and from individual staff to management and political level have greater chance of lasting results. It is, however, much more difficult and time consuming to work at systemic level and where many stakeholders are involved.

Main outcome from session:

1. Improved understanding of gains and challenges related to broad based and long-term capacity development
2. A set of suggestions and recommendations for how to best make use of administrative sources for use in statistics production.
3. Increased understanding among participants on the subject which might lead to new initiatives in countries

The speakers will act in teams made up of the respective partners in the implementation of a project. Presentations of the teams will be joint and brief. This will say that Kyrgyzstan is presenting with Norway, Kenya is presenting with Sweden, etc. The presentations provide the basis for the following discussions with the participants.

The moderators will not give presentations but have a facilitator function. The second part of the session is envisioned as an open space workshop with active engagement of the participants. The facilitators will be needed to guide discussions as well as document the participant 's input.