NSDS at the heart of progress
Since the turn of the millennium, countries around the world have made leaps and bounds in producing data and statistics to capture vital information on people’s lives and the quality of the living environment. Much of this progress is thanks to concerted efforts by countries and their partners to align statistical planning to development agendas and national development plans and develop realistic time-bound financing plans that will ensure that activities actually take place. National strategies for the development of statistics (NSDS) are the determining factor in whether countries are able to produce the right
data at the right time for national policymaking needs. The NSDS maps national statistical systems, opens the door to collaboration across actors in the system, addresses challenges before they become bottlenecks in data and mobilises funding nationally and internationally.
For PARIS21, the NSDS is the means to establish long, sustainable and fruitful partnerships with countries. The robustness and usefulness of each strategy is an indicator of how effectively PARIS21’s NSDS Guidelines, knowledge products and support have helped its partners, and how its support needs to evolve to respond to a changing environment. For PARIS21, the NSDS is fundamental to understanding how to be an effective and trusted partner, but, until recently, no one had measured and tracked the value of the NSDS on countries’ statistical capacity and maturity. As the data and statistics community enters a new era in which there is a need to do more with less resources, a deeper understanding of the levers of progress is essential.
What can we learn from countries’ experiences?
An NSDS is a roadmap for implementing a new vision
In 2020, Paraguay entirely revamped its statistical system. The country approved a new statistics law that included the creation of an independent and modernised National Institute of Statistics (INE). The NSDS developed that same year was of critical importance in guiding the transition and transformation of the statistical office into an independent institute which now oversees a more coordinated, digitally enabled and strategically guided system. The results of the mid-term evaluation of the NSDS have shown a jump in SDG indicator coverage from 32% to 52% and furthermore that Paraguay's statistical capacity has grown from below to above the regional average for Latin America according to the World Bank’s Statistical Performance Index (SPI). INE attributes this success to a better integration within the NSS and workflow thanks to mechanisms designed in the NSDS, for example, regular meetings between NSS entities, an annual survey on the status of planned statistical activities, and the availability and source of funding, and a new application to report progress on activities.
Inclusion improves coherence and support
In Rwanda the NSDS helps to foster political support for statistics: since 2014 its NSDS has been approved by the Cabinet - the highest decision-making body in the executive branch of the Government. Rwanda has also increased its budget allocation to statistics and demand for data ensuring that statistical activities have the necessary resources.
In Gambia and Lesotho donor support co-ordination mechanisms were created to ensure adequate
funding and reduce duplication. To strengthen coherence and good practice across different sectors,
Bhutan developed a National Data Governance Framework (NDGF), this framework which emphasises the need for streamlined data sharing across the NSS has been formally approved by the Office of the Prime Minister and Cabinet.
The NSDS is a process, not an end goal
When Madagascar evaluated its first NSDS in 2023 national stakeholders noted insufficient budget allocation had prevented the full scope of activities from being carried out. When developing the second NSDS in 2023, national stakeholders were careful to highlight the importance of securing adequate funding for activities.
Likewise, Statistics Botswana identified weaknesses in its first NSDS and used these as a driving force for a stronger second NSDS. Strengthening collaboration and coordination in the NSS was a major goal: the creation of Sector Statistics Committees brought together producers and users of statistics from across ministries to harmonise their methods, reduce duplication of efforts and ensure that standards are upheld. Sectoral statistics now feed directly into Botswana’s NSDS.
For Senegal, now implementing their fourth NSDS, each new iteration builds on the previous. From the institutional frameworks put into place in the first NSDS, the fourth strategy now underway puts strong data governance at the centre of an agenda to modernise the national statistical system to be inclusive dynamic and resilient. The strategy’s four pillars emphasise: developing user-responsive public statistics; improving dissemination and statistical literacy; modernising the NSS through innovation and technological watch; and strengthening partnerships and international cooperation.
The NSDS is a part of statebuilding, it shouldn’t come after it
Post-conflict countries like Yemen and Somalia are showing that the NSDS development does not need to be deprioritized in favour of other aspects of statebuilding. Both countries are incorporating statistical strategies into their rebuilding efforts, in order to provide official data and statistics to policymakers when they are most needed.
Yemen, for example, has targeted economic statistical capacity in order to support its economic stability. In 2023, Yemen’s Central Statistics Organisation (CSO) and other economic institutions in Yemen assessed how capacity aligned with the country’s economic data needs, in order to put into place a strategy to build the necessary capacity to deliver economic data collection and analysis.
Somalia is demonstrating that post-conflict states do not need to lower their statistical ambitions. The Somalia National Bureau of Statistics (SNBS) was created in 2020 and has recently developed a second NSDS. In this short period of time, SNBS has implemented some major statistical activities which provide essential foundations for decision making. For example, the first modernised national CPI, where previous iterations covered only the capital; an Integrated Household Budget Survey recently carried out for a second time; a Business Establishment Census and Survey; and an upcoming Agricultural and Livestock Census. With these data, Somalia is increasingly able to put together the vital statistics necessary to produce quarterly GDP estimates and information for policymaking that supports a stable economic and social climate. This huge increase in the production of statistics has been accompanied by ambitious and
forward-looking data collection techniques to fill gaps where coverage remains patchy at a national level. The recent NSDS includes a framework which aims to incorporate geospatial technology throughout the national statistical system. The NSDS also includes a component on citizen-generated data, a relatively innovative domain for many national statistical offices, but one that has potential to improve data coverage in the country.
How does PARIS21 make the NSDS a catalyst for systemic improvement?
PARIS21 works year-round on different stages of the NSDS lifecycle with countries at varying levels of capacity. In doing so, PARIS21 has acquired a unique perspective as a knowledge broker to help
countries share challenges and solutions regarding the NSDS. In parallel, PARIS21’s connection to fellow champions of development data and statistics, such as regional and international organisations and think tanks, provide insights into global challenges, how data needs are changing, and technological innovations that may be beneficial. Through these exchanges, PARIS21 can ensure that its guidance and support to countries on the NSDS remains pertinent and up to date.
PARIS21’s NSDS guidance is designed to build autonomy, not reliance
In practice, most countries require external support during the NSDS design cycle – since it demands additional resources and special expertise which NSOs may not have on hand. However, as countries complete and advance through NSDS stages their capacity changes, and so do their support needs. Rwanda, for example, designed its fourth NSDS in 2024, using principally in-house resources and calling on
support from PARIS21 to advise on how to collaborate more effectively with other NSS actors.
Countries have added a gender focus to their NSDS and started to make systemic changes to improve gender data availability for policymaking
In 2021, the Maldives introduced a new Statistical Act along with its NSDS marking a turning point in the country’s approach to gender statistics. Working in collaboration with the Ministry of Social and Family Development, a new Gender Equality Action Plan included an explicit call to improve gender data and statistics, enabling the Maldives to integrate gender data into all stages of the development of official statistics. This Plan helps to highlight how women and men are affected by policies across the whole of society.
New modules to systemically tackle data gaps
To support different communities, PARIS21 has developed a modular approach to its guidance, which is updated regularly under guidance from NSDS experts from around the world. The NSDS cycle also allows countries to access support on their NSDS according to where they are in the cycle. In Senegal, the fourth NSDS has mainstreamed gender equality and climate change statistics into the strategy for the first time: aligning the strategy with the country’s most pressing issues for policymaking.
Where an NSDS does not exist, countries can still benefit from a structured approach
The Dominican Republic does not yet have an NSDS in place, however the national statistical office, ONE, uses mid-term statistical plans to improve co-ordination across the NSS. These plans take a similar approach to the NSDS process, particularly in their multistakeholder approach to improve engagement between users and producers, as well as between the NSO and other data producers. ONE noted particular improvements with coordination of the national statistical system and user-producer
engagement to align data demand with supply. The Dominican Republic’s progress is illustrated by its improving scores on measurements such as SPI - increasing from 64.3 (2020) to 74.1 (2023), the Open Data Inventory - scoring 62 (2024), reflecting stronger data accessibility and the Sustainable Development Goal Index – scoring 73.8 (2023), highlighting improved use of data for policy and monitoring. However, the fact that these mid-term statistical plans lack formal commitment has its drawbacks, namely in ensuring that institutions across the NSS adhere to the actions plans and in using these plans to ensure stable financing for activities.
Where next for NSDS?
PARIS21’s enduring value as a partner is shown through the high numbers of countries who continue to seek its support for NSDS development; these partnerships enrich and improve PARIS21’s knowledge base, allowing it to become more responsive and adapted to countries’ needs. This iterative cycle can be shown for example in how PARIS21’s 3.0 Guidelines on Developing National Strategies for the Development of Statistics have been refined through peer review and feedback from country partners to be more action oriented, and the creation of modules on gender and more recently the climate change data ecosystem, transformation and modernisation enablers, Voluntary National Reviews and innovation and digitalisation help to guide NSOs through the expanding number of areas which have an impact on statistical systems. Realising that our successes with countries manifest themselves in many ways, PARIS21 is now developing a structured approach to measuring NSDS that will capture as many of these aspects as possible, through both qualitative and quantitative tracking . PARIS21 is developing an NSDS
Observatory, an interactive platform, through which partners will find reliable and up to date information on NSDS status, best practices, statistical performance, evaluation reports, knowledge products and investment in statistics. Building this knowledge base should help the data and statistics community more widely to understand the drivers of change, and how to achieve these.
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