16 December 2016: An Asia-Pacific committee has agreed to a framework for strengthening governments’ ability to produce and use statistics for tracking progress on the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The framework outlines five ‘action areas’ as well as an indicative list, for each action area, of regional resources and prospective delivery mechanisms.

The UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) convened the fifth session of the Committee on Statistics, a grouping of officers from national statistical organizations (NSOs), from 14-16 December 2016, in Bangkok, Thailand. Shamshad Akhtar, ESCAP Executive Secretary, reported that 88 of the current global indicators for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) lack methodological guidelines or standards, and called on governments to take an active role in resolving gaps in the existing guidelines and standards that have been developed at the global level.

The five action areas that will be the focus of collaboration, per the agreed framework, are: engaging users and investing in statistics; assuring quality and instilling trust in statistics; integrated statistics for integrated analysis; modernizing statistical business processes; and having the requisite skills sets. In addition to considering the draft framework for action, the Committee also heard reports on existing regional initiatives on economic statistics, population and social statistics, civil registration and vital statistics, disaster-related statistics, and agricultural and rural statistics.

The Governing Council for the Statistical Institute for Asia and the Pacific (SIAP) also met during the Committee on Statistics Meeting, and several side events took place.

The Committee on Statistics is one of nine ESCAP committees. It aims to ensure that by 2020 all countries in the Asia-Pacific region have the capability to provide a basic range of population, economic, social and environmental statistics. It also seeks to create a more adaptive and cost-effective information management environment for national statistical offices through stronger collaboration. [ESCAP Press Release] [Meeting Documents] [Advancing official statistics for the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development: a collective vision and framework for action by the Asia-Pacific statistical community] [Committee on Statistics Webpage]