International Development: Growing a Global Statistical System

In this episode, w e explore ONS's work with other countries to raise the world's statistical capabilities. Transcript MILES FLETCHER Hello and welcome again to 'Statistically Speaking ', the Office for National Statistics' Podcast. I'm M i les Fletcher , a nd in this episod e we' r e going international. Now it hardly needs saying that global issues , climate change, population growth, inflation, to name a few are best understood and addressed with the benefit of good global statistics. So, to that end, the ONS works in partnership with a number of countries worldwide with the ultimate aim of raising the world's statistical capabilities. A t the one end of Africa, for example, a continent w here it ' s deeply involved , t hat includes embedding state of the art inflation indices and other economic data in Ghana. On the other side of the continent, it's meant using AI and machine learning to track the movement of displaced populations in Somalia. How do you run a census in places where nobody has a permanent address? It's a ll fascinating work and here to tell us about it , Emily P osk e tt , Head of International Development at the ONS ; Tim Harris of the ONS D ata S cience C ampus 's international development team ; and joining us from Accra , our special guest , G overnment S tatistician of the Republic of Ghana and head of the Ghanaian S tatistical Service Professor Samuel Annim . Emily then , to start give us the big overview if you would , set out for us the scale and the purpose of this international development work that the ONS is doing. EMILY POSKETT We work with countries around the developing world to support strong modern statistical systems wherever we see a suitable opportunity to do so. MF What form does that work take? Doe s it mean statistician s going out to these countries? EP Yes, it does, when that's the right way to go about things. So our work is usually through the form of medium-term partnerships with a small group of national statistical offices , or NSOs , from the developing world, and those partnerships are medium term over a number of years in order to build up a real understanding of the context in that country , t hat national statistical office ' s vision for modernization and how the ONS can b e of most help to achieve their own goals under their own strategy. That relationship will normally be led by a particular individual who spends time getting to know the context and getting to know the people , getting to know what ONS can do to help. A partnership might cover a range of topic areas from census to data science to leadership training to economic statistics, and the lead point of contact , the strategic advisor in many cases , will bring in the relevant experts from across ONS , and they'll work through virtual collaboration but also through on - site visits, and they will work out the best timing for those and the best delivery modality in order to ensure that the gains are sustained. O ur primary focus really is to make sure that changes that we support in the partner organisation are sustainable , and the work that ONS does using the UK 's aid budget is really impactful and leads to long term change. We don't always work through direct partnerships, for example where we see opportunities to work alongside other organisations , s o international institutions like the World Bank or other national statistics offices like Statistics Canada or S tatistics Sweden , they might choose to bring us in to deliver small pieces of focu s s ed technical assistance alongside their own programmes . O ne of our medium-term partnerships is with the United Nations Economic Commission For Africa (UNECA), a nd they work with all 54 countries of Africa, and they can choose to bring in our expertise alongside their own to target particular needs in particular countries. But I would say that 70% of our effort is through these medium-term partnerships . MF So the ONS is providing one part of a large patchwork of work , going on right across the developing world, but what is the ultimate purpose of that? What are all these countries trying to achieve together? EP Well, strong statistical systems are essential in all countries to aid effective planning and informed decision making. And this is even more important in developing countries where resources are often scarce and you're trying to use scarce resources to target a wide range of needs across the population. And that resource might include UK aid for example, and aid from other countries. The UK has been statistical capacity building for many, many years through different modalities , work ing with partners, and the ONS is just one implementing partner who can be called upon to provide that technical expertise . We're really proud to be a partner of choice for a number of developing countries and t he ONS is seen worldwide as being a leader. W e're really proud that countries like Ghana would choose to work with us , and that we want to do our bit to help them to achieve their own strategy and their own goals. MF Well, this seems like an excellent moment to bring in Professor Samuel Annim . Our great pleasure , great honour , to have you with us professor. From your perspective , and what you're looking to achieve in the Ghana S tatistical S ervice , h ow important how useful is the work with ONS been for you ? PROFESSOR SAMU E L ANNIM F rom the perspective of how it has been important for us , I mean, I look at it from several aspects. I got into office in 2019 , a year after the ONS and GSS collaboration had been established . And when I joined obviously, I had a sense of what I want ed to contribute to the office . P artnership that we've seen between N ational Statistical O ffices over the years have always taken the dimension of statistical production partnership s, and what I simply mean by that is that they're going in to help the service deliver on its core mandate. So for example, if price statistics are the priority , then that is the area you want to focus on, but our partnership with ONS took a different dimensio n. I n addition to focusing on the traditional mandate of the Institute, which is the production of statistics, we really have over the period achieved some milestones from the perspective of transformation , which is of high priority to me , and secondly, from the perspective of injecting technology or contemporary ways of dispensing our duty as a N ational Statistical Off ice. So from an individual point of view, it has it has been beneficial to the mission that I have , and since then we have ke pt on working in the area of transformation. MF Listening to what you have to say there , it does sound as though some of the big challenges you face at the moment a re not too dissimilar from the ones face d by ONS , all about modernising statistics, particularly using big data and new technology . SA I ndeed , and I must say that it is a wave across all national statistical offices , because we are now trying to complement traditional surveys and censuses with non-traditional data sources i.e. Big Data, administrative data, citizens generated data and other geospatial resources. So collaborating is the key thing here , because this is n ew to the st atistical community. So it's important we collaborate to learn how you are dealing with issues that are not consistent with the production of official statistics. Now as a global community, we are all thinking about how to use citizens generated science, I mean, getting citizens to provide us with data. And this is an area in which there isn't any N ational Statistical Office that can claim authority , because the approach and the processes are pretty not consistent with the guidelines for production of official statistics. So it's important to learn how countries are doing it and see how we can collaborate to get this done. MF Yes, in the last episode of our podcast, interestingly, we talked about the challenges of getting our citizens here in the UK to take part in surveys . A re Ghanaians friendly to what you're trying to achieve ? O r are they perhaps sceptical as well and difficult to engage? SA I wouldn't say they're sceptical , I think they really feel part of it. And that is one of the strengths of citizen generated data , because if you package it in a way that it is more demand driven, rather than supply , you don't just go and tell them ' do this because I know how it's supposed to be done ' , but instead give them the platform to tell the N ational Statistical Office what their experiences are, provide them with platforms that they can easily engage s o that they can feel part of the process and they really own the product. I n our case, it is not a product that is owned by the statistical service but it is a product that is owned by the sub national agencies , and that is, as I said earlier, the beauty of citizen generated data. It is co - creation and co- ownership of the st atistical product . S o they are not sceptical , they are very receptive t o i t , and they are getting a better understanding of what we do as a N ational Statistical Office. MF Thinking internationally , thinking globally , w hat sort of shape do you think the world's statistical system is in now , as a result of partnerships like this or other developments, generally looking across Africa and looking beyond Africa, when we think about key issues, particularly climate change - how good is the statistical system now in tracking these very important changes, and the impacts they're having? SA We have as national statistical offices been very con tent w ith the traditional statistics - labour statistics, price statistics, GDP - and you do that either monthly, quarterly, or in some instances annually, and even the social indicators , I mean, it's only a few countries like the UK that has been able to do social indicators annually , for those of us in the Global South, a lot of the social indicators are being collected every five year s, or every seven to eight years. So this was the way national statistical offices , up until about 2017 or 2018, w ere shaped . B ut with the data revolution that we saw around 2014 , an d since the World Development Report , the data for better lives document , that came out in 2021 , c learly, we now ha ve to approach statistics from a different point of view. And this is simply asking the question, how do I contextualise the statistics beyond what international communities would be expectin g national statistical offices to do ? I mean , now we are doing everything possible to ensure that we have a monthly GDP , and this is something that we are also learning from the partnership with ONS, because we are aware that they are developing models to ensure that beyond GDP they have some indicators that would readily give us insight on economic performance . A nd related to the issue of climate change that you a re you talking about M iles , i t's one of the areas that you cannot simply dispense your statistics in that one area as a standalone N ational S tatistical O ffice , because this is something that has a continental dimension, something that has a global dimension. And at the moment we have data sitting in different silos , a nd the only thing that we can do is through partnership, see how we can bring these datasets together to help us get a better understanding of issues around climate change. So going forward, in my point of view, if we really want to sustain the transformation that we are seeing as a global Statistical Office, the only way out is through partnership , is through collaboration. And one of the things that I'm putting on the table is that we better begin to measure partnerships. Because we've treated partnerships as a qualitative engagement. And really, nobody knows which partnerships are working and which are not working. So if we're able to measure it, we can more clearly see the benefits of partnership s , although we all hold the view that it is the way to go. MF Interesting what you said about how we've traditionally concentrated on those classical measures of economic progress , and notably GDP. You might be interested to hear that the charity Oxfam, the big NGO , was in the news here in the UK recently when they said that GDP was ' colonialist ' , and it was 'anti-feminist ', because it ignore d the huge economic value of unpaid work, which they said is largely undertaken by women. Well, whether you agree with that or not, it does perhaps highlight the need for going beyond GDP and producing these alternative , and perhaps richer , wider measures of economic progress and economic value. SA I mean, I clearly associate with that submission, and we currently doing some work with the United Nations Development Programme on the National Human Development Report. And the focus of th is report is exactly what you are talking about , Miles . We are looking at the current value of work , and we are looking at the future value of work. And we are going beyond the definition of who is employed, which strictly looks at whether the work that you are doing co mes with remuneration or not , because once you b roaden it and look at the value of work, you definitely have the opportunity to look at people who are doing unpaid work , and indeed their contribution to the progress that we are seeing as a human society, and the National Human Development Report has a sharp focus on this gender issue. They're going to look at that closely. And again, this is coming on the backdrop of an ongoing annual household income and expenditure survey that we are doing. So traditionally, government and international organisations would ask what is your employment and what is your unemployment rate? And then in this report, we tell them that we need to begin to look at those who are working, but we see they're not employed , s imply because they are not working for p ay or profit, and the proportion of people who are in there, and then once you disaggregate based on sex, age and geography, it's so revealing that we are losing a number of insights from the perspective of unpaid work . And so I fully

You can listen to International Development: Growing a Global Statistical System online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

International Development: Growing a Global Statistical System is an episode from Statistically Speaking by Office for National Statistics.

This episode is 33:57 long.

This episode was published on Aug 29, 2023.

Yes. Use the heart button on the episode page to add it to your favorite episodes list.

Yes. This page shows related episodes from Statistically Speaking when more episodes are available from the podcast feed.