Supporting country communications

Communication of national statistics, and the work of national statistics offices, is essential. It helps the public to understand the neutrality and independence of NSOs, and the value of national statistics as the basic building blocks of governance and policy making. This drives greater acceptance and use of national statistics by the public, journalists, and policy makers, thereby bolstering civic engagement.

Communications Strategy Development Guidelines for NSOs

These guidelines aim to provide strategic guidance and outline the practical steps and resources needed for national statistics offices (NSOs) to develop an integrated communications strategy. It covers in detail each step of a five-step strategy development process: scoping, research, analysis, drafting and launch. The handbook is a practical, a mix of instructions, tips and resources. 

Handbook for NSOs | Manuel pour les INS  | Directrices para las INE

PARIS21's Advocacy Toolkit

PARIS21 has produced a Country-level Advocacy Toolkit, which aims to help national statistical system managers and statisticians in developing countries with their own advocacy work and to demonstrate the advantages of planning advocacy systematically. It gathers, in a single package, advocacy methodology, tools, tips and messages.

The Toolkit deals with statistical advocacy at the country level. It focuses on statistical advocacy as a means to convince policy-makers, civil society, Media, NGOs and representatives of multilateral and bilateral agencies in developing countries of the importance of statistics in the wider context of development and, in particular, of the necessity for developing countries to have a well-prepared, adequately funded and successfully implemented National Strategy for the Development of Statistics (NSDS).

Download PARIS21's Advocacy Toolkit

Data Communication: Journalist-Statistician Dialogue

Today, in the context of the 2030 Agenda for sustainable development and with the need of data producers to work with all partners from the data ecosystem, there is even more of a need to stimulate this dialogue. This exchange is a fundamental step in the NSDS design process and is used to advocate, as widely as possible, for statistical capacity development. In this framework, PARIS21 supports the dialogue between data producers and several types of users.

PARIS21 has been working since 2014 to reinforce the dialogue between National Statistics Offices and journalists, through a specific programme of training and national workshops.

Training of Trainers

As part of its Data Communication Training Toolkit, PARIS21 organises trainings of trainers (journalists and statisticians), consisting of e-learning sessions over two weeks, and face-to-face sessions, using video and audio recordings.

National trainings

PARIS21 organises national trainings to gather statisticians and journalists. The aim of these workshops is to help statisticians better communicate on data and figures as well as to help journalists better understand statistics and the work of statisticians. At the end of the workshops, concrete recommendations are proposed, including actions to improve the regular provision of statistics to journalists, establishment of a network of journalists, and organisation of conferences and regular meetings with the press.

Previous workshops include:

• Botswana (December 2022)
• Rwanda (March 2017)
• São Tomé and Príncipe (July 2016)
• Malawi (July 2015)
• Western Africa (January 2015)
• Côte d’Ivoire (July 2014)