This section provides a space to explore challenges and solutions available to National Statistical Offices to be agile and innovative in adapting their data production methods and processes and ensure continuity of major official statistical programmes.
As the world tackles the spread of COVID-19 and its unprecedented impacts on economies, societies and the environment, we are all stepping into unknown territory. Everybody, from politicians to parents, from newly unemployed workers to nurses, from supermarket cashiers to schoolchildren in front of computer screens, faces great uncertainty. But not everything is unknown. We can arm ourselves with facts to navigate through this uncertainty, guiding decisions and informing plans.
The novel coronavirus pandemic has exacted a heavy toll, with more than 6 million cases worldwide and nearly 400,000 deaths from COVID-19 as of this writing. Much of the world remains on lockdown, adding loss of livelihood and financial suffering to the grave health impacts of the virus.
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Chief
Statisticians from across the world are leading the response of National
Statistical Systems to the data challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, even in the
context of major disruptions in day-to-day statistical operations. Sir Ian
Diamond, UK’s National Statistician, shares in an interview how the
Office of National Statistics of the United Kingdom
is innovating and working together with the family of National Statistic
Institutes around the globe to provide timely and reliable data to monitor and
contain the spread of the disease and its socio-economic impacts, and to inform
the design of effective recovery policies. Here you can find the video recording
and a slightly edited transcript of the interview.
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Household
surveys play an important role in meeting national data needs.1 But with the
ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, household survey programmes in many countries have
been impacted in different ways. While some countries have started to use
telephone and web surveys for their national surveys, many still rely on
face-to-face interviews. It is these operations that have been affected the most
by the pandemic. Is now the right moment for countries that have been relying on
face-to-face interviews to make the switch to telephone interviews, given that
the mobile phone penetration is already quite high in most of the countries?
Professor Jim Lepkowski
of the University of Michigan, a leading expert on survey methodology, shares
his thoughts on designing and conducting telephone surveys in a conversation
with the UN Statistics Division (UNSD).
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The
Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE)
had to postpone the Population Census until 2021 and suspend the data collection
of its in-presence surveys due to the pandemic. As a result, to respond to the
new reality of remote work, IBGE’s
National School of Statistical Sciences (ENCE)
increased the number of e-learning opportunities.
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Samoa is one of the few countries that have yet to confirm a positive case of
COVID-19. However, the partial lockdown from 21 March to 2 May 2020, and the
closure of borders since 25 March to date, have impacted on some of the on-going
data collections activities, scheduled trainings and also stakeholder
consultations. Some key impacts are listed in this note.
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The unprecedented outbreak of the coronavirus and its resulting crisis have
created a huge challenge to the routines of many governmental, non-governmental,
civil society, organizations and businesses. The
Statistical Centre of Iran (SCI), like other
National Statistical Offices (NSOs), is making necessary adjustments to prevent
disruptions in the production of high-quality time series of statistical data
and information required by policymakers, academics, researchers and other
statistical users at the lowest possible cost and in the shortest possible time.
Moreover, the SCI considers itself responsible for observing the health
protocols of statistical enumerators as well as respondents to surveys and
censuses, and prioritizes keeping the valuable social capital.
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The
COVID-19 situation presents a double challenge for statistical offices:
increased demand for statistics to manage pandemic and its impacts, combined
with obstacles to collecting data and producing statistics. To help statistical
offices deal with the crisis, the
United Nations Economic Commission for Europe
has announced the launch of the
UNECE platform on COVID-19 and official statistics.
The UNECE platform provides guidance in the areas of UNECE expertise and focuses
on the work done under the
Conference of European Statisticians (CES).
As such, it complements information by other international organizations.
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Under the current COVID-19 situation and following the directives set by the
government of Colombia, the
National Statistical Office (DANE) has sought to
adopt strategies that ensure the adequate performance of the institution. These
strategies have been agreed under the framework of an internal Ad-hoc Emergency
Committee that has allowed DANE to quickly adapt to the evolving situation. The
adopted measures have been guided by the principle of ensuring the well-being of
our staff (with more than 95 percent of DANE’s work force currently
telecommuting and all administrative processes having been adjusted to be done
virtually), while maximizing statistical production.
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The
COVID-19 pandemic is putting civil registration authorities under an
unprecedented level of stress, where the failure to register all vital events
may lead to serious difficulties in generating accurate and timely vital
statistics. In the framework of the UN Legal Identity Agenda (LIA)—a holistic
approach to civil registration, vital statistics and identity management
launched in May 2019 and officially endorsed in March 2020—, the UN Legal
Identity Task Force is working to assess the impact of COVID-19 on registration
of vital events and generating vital statistics, and helping countries address
these challenges.
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The
OECD created a protected
digital workspace
to provide experts with the possibility to discuss problems and solutions or
seek advice in a simple and pragmatic way. The workspace is a collaborative
effort with logistics being managed by the OECD Secretariat, and participation
of several international organizations, among which the United Nations (UN), the
United National Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), the European Central
Bank (ECB), the International Labour Organisation (ILO), the International
Monetary Fund (IMF), the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), PARIS21 and
others.
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Under
the current COVID-19 crisis, what can we learn from our past experience in
collecting information through telephone interviews, when person-to-person
interview is not possible? This note provides a few points for statistical
organizations to consider when deciding whether to adopt such an approach.
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The
United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD) inquired through an informal email
consultation with our regional partners whether the COVID-19 pandemic had
impacted the data production of International Merchandise Trade Statistics
(IMTS). Most regions reported that—so far—there is no interruption in data
production and transmission, at least until the reference period of
February 2020.
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In
response to the evolving COVID-19 situation, Statistics Canada has adopted a
strategy that seeks to ensure the continuity of Statistics Canada’s mission
critical programs and essential services. This note provides an overview of
Statistics Canada’s response on such programmes and services, as well as other
activites related to monitoring, analysing and modeling the social and economic
impacts of COVID-19 epidemic in Canada.
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As
the ongoing global crisis related to the COVID-19 pandemic continues to unfold,
there is an increasing risk of less production and dissemination of
disaggregated, high quality foundational data in National Statistical Systems
(NSS) in developing and least-developed countries, already facing a capacity
squeeze. While those NSSs adjust their operations in the face of lockdowns and
other mitigation policies, policymakers and citizens need to take quick,
informed actions to tackle the crisis—ideally based on quality data accessible
to everyone. Consequently, the combination of rising demands and constrained
supply of official statistics reduces NSS capacity to contribute to response and
recovery activities.
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The
International Labour Organization (ILO) has reached out to National
Statistical Offices (NSOs) to understand the impacts of COVID-19 on their
statistical operations, in particular in the domain of labour statistics and the
operation of national Labour Force Surveys (LFS).
A note published by ILO with the results of this consultation
shows that all countries are facing a major challenge in maintaining continuity
and quality, while simultaneously attempting/needing to be flexible and react to
changing circumstances.
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In
a time when it is difficult to collect data from the field, the use of
administrative registers for statistical purposes can be an important
alternative source of information to continue making data and statistics
available to the public. While many countries already have systems in place for
the use of administrative data and would only need to adjust the approach to
include more sources, other countries may need to start with the basics.
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National
Statistical Offices are being challenged to introduce telephone-based
interviewing and web-based self-reporting techniques at once for many critical
data collection operations—such as population and housing, agricultural, and
economic censuses, as well as household, business and other types of surveys. In
many cases, they need to do it without the benefit of prior experience and with
very limited time to conduct detailed analysis and testing of the different
alternatives.
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Russian.
In
an effort to contain the spread of the COVID-19 epidemic, many governments are
imposing severe restrictions on the mobility of their populations, disrupting
field statistical data collection operations and threatening the ability of
National Statistical Offices to deliver high-quality, timely and cost-effective
statistical outputs.
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Russian.
As
part of the response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the United Nations Statistics
Division, in its role as Secretariat of the 2020 World Population and Housing
Census Programme, is compiling a country-by-country
overview of the pandemic’s impact on census-taking activities in the year 2020.
This information is updated daily with details provided by the census managers
from countries.