UNECE platform on COVID-19 and official statistics: providing practical guidance

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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.

Maintained by the UNECE Statistical Division, the platform aims to provide advice, sources and a discussion forum, and includes guidance in the following areas:

• Support for managing the crisis—a collection of case studies is underway on how statistical offices provide data and other support to their governments in dealing with the crisis and assessing its impacts;
• How to collect data and continue production of statistics in the areas of social and demographic statistics (e.g. how to run a population census); economic statistics (e.g. how to deal with calculation of CPI and GDP), and cross-cutting and managerial issues (e.g. usage of mobile positioning data).

The platform is a living resource and will be continuously updated with new material. For example, various COVID-19 related issues will be discussed at the Conference of European Statisticians (CES) plenary session on 22-24 June 2020. It includes links to relevant guidance produced by other international organizations. Under the Related initiatives section, we provide a link to related platforms of our major partners, such as Eurostat, OECD, UNSD, IMF, ILO, and selected regional commissions.

UNECE welcomes comments to the discussion fora under each area, as well as submission of examples, innovative solutions or other material that could be shared with statistical offices. Visit UNECE platform on COVID-19 and official statistics here.

This article was contributed by UNECE Statistical Division