Conference of Eastern Europe, Caucasus and Central Asia countries (EECCA) in Minsk 6-7 October 2016

RASt experience was discussed at the Conference of Eastern Europe, Caucasus and Central Asia countries (EECCA) in Minsk 6-7 October 2016

The EECCA Conference is part of a series of regional conferences on a Transformative Agenda for Official Statistics in support of the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda and other global, regional and national development policies and initiatives. The Conference aims at taking stock of various international, regional and national initiatives that have been undertaken or planned for integrating and modernizing statistical systems, and shaping the global initiative for a Transformative Agenda to the EECCA context.

Chief Statisticians and managers from national statistical offices/committees (NSOs) from EECCA countries, Mongolia and the Russian Federation participated in the Conference along with senior representatives from the Interstate Statistical Committee of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS-Stat) and the Statistics Department of the Eurasian Economic Commission (EEC).

The Conference covered the five thematic areas of the Transformative Agenda and was organized in three substantive sessions as follows:

• Measuring and communicating the value of statistics in support of the modernisation and transformation of official statistics
• Mainstreaming technological development in data collection, processing and dissemination: good practices and challenges
• Developing a collective vision for advancing the transformation of statistics at global, regional and national level

It was noted during the Conference that to meet expectations, the effective communication strategies and opportunities must be maintained and encouraged by public and private dialogue with key partners such as the policy makers, the media, the academy and researchers, the civil society, business associations and professional societies.

This idea was illustrated in the presentation of Dr. Alexey Ponomarenko (Chairman of the Russian Association of Statisticians (RASt)), who demonstrated how a non-governmental professional organization could be the effective tool for establishing partnerships among the data  producers and statistical communities and for communicating the value of official statistics. It was also mentioned that specific training courses on communication in Russian language (i.e. drafting press releases, speaking to the media, statistical outreach) and communication and advocacy material could be organised and developed at regional level.

The positive role of the RASt was noted in the final communique of the Conference. reed more