Heads of the national statistics offices (NSO) in OECS Member States; permanent secretaries; social planners and economists; directors of planning/research/policy; other senior public sector officers, and staff of the OECS Commission, representatives from the World Bank and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) met on 11 and 12 April,2016 in Barbados for a consultative meeting to receive support for the OECS Regional Strategy for the Development of Statistics (RSDS).
The overarching objective of the OECS RSDS is to strengthen Member States’ national statistical system (NSS) so that it is equipped and trusted to produce high quality, comparable and accessible official statistics. Many aspects of official statistics were discussed including statistical governance and legislation, technical capacity and professional development, use of information technology, the administration of statistical offices, data collection protocols, analysis, use, advocacy, communication and dissemination, and mechanisms for statistical partnerships and cooperation.
The RSDS is expected to be a 13 year planning tool. According to the Dr. Gale Archibald, Head, Statistical Services Unit, and the Commission's point person for the OECS RSDS "statisticians and other data producers, need to re-think, re-imagine and re-engineer the current modus operandi to be able to take advantage of and participate in the global transformative agenda for official statistics and to respond to the sophisticated demands of a variety of data users".
The meeting was sponsored under the DFID-funded OECS Statistical Capacity Building and Implementation of the OECS Regional Strategy for the Development of Statistics Project, managed by UNDP and World Bank.
National Stakeholders Consult on the
OECS Regional Strategy for the Development of Statistics