Central Office for Statistics and Information Technology (COSIT) and USAID collaborate on key Conference for Iraq’s Statistical Master Plan
30 Oct 2008
–
The USAID-funded Tatweer project collaborated with Iraq’s Central Office for Statistics and Information Technology (COSIT) and held a conference attended by the Minister of Planning, Dr. Ali Baban and over one hundred members of different Ministries and Governorates nationwide. Dr. Mehdi Al-Alak, the Director General with COSIT opened the conference and thanked Tatweer:
"I would like to express on behalf of my colleagues and members of the working group who prepared the National Strategy for Development of Statistics, our appreciation of Tatweer’s efforts in the design and development of this strategy with experts as Mr. Emilio Matuk in preparation for this conference."
Emilio Matuk, Tatweer’s senior advisor to COSIT, and former Chief Statistician for the Government of Peru, saw that Iraq’s rank had dipped to fifth worse on the World Bank’s index of statistical reporting capacity. Matuk sought the Minister’s approval to send the many statistical documents that the Government of Iraq had completed, but had not provided to the World Bank. As a result of Matuk’s efforts, Iraq’s ranking jumped to 34th in the ranking.
More importantly, “Iraqis decided to assume they were the fifth worse rather than repudiate it,” Matuk said. As a result, COSIT recognized the lasting value of the capacity index as a measuring tool for improvement, so much so that the office took a bold step of creating a committee of seven senior staff to prepare a five-year Statistical Master Plan and a comprehensive reorganization of nationwide statistics gathering.
The most important element of the COSIT Conference was to distribute a two-hundred page document for a five-year Statistical Master Plan for 2010 to 2014 that will set Iraqi statistics in top ten percent of non-industrialized countries and the top ten percent of countries with best statistical practices in the benchmarking of the World Bank’s Statistical Capacity Index.
A successful Statistical Master Plan needs to have a consensus within all government units that are users and/or producers of statistics. The proposed plan will be reviewed by all entities. Once an agreement is reached the Minister’s Cabinet will endorse it.
The attendees of the conference discussed and debated the proposed plan throughout the day. Tatweer is planning a follow up series of small workshops in order to collect comments and criticisms on the five-year Statistical Master Plan from the different statistical units of the Ministries and Governorates of Iraq and finalize the plan.
Once the five-year Statistical Master Plan for 2010 to 2014 is finalized, Iraq will have a plan that will triple the budget and the workforce of the actual statistical agency; in such manner that Iraq will be competitive with its peers in the region and with all non-industrialized countries.
"I would like to express on behalf of my colleagues and members of the working group who prepared the National Strategy for Development of Statistics, our appreciation of Tatweer’s efforts in the design and development of this strategy with experts as Mr. Emilio Matuk in preparation for this conference."
Emilio Matuk, Tatweer’s senior advisor to COSIT, and former Chief Statistician for the Government of Peru, saw that Iraq’s rank had dipped to fifth worse on the World Bank’s index of statistical reporting capacity. Matuk sought the Minister’s approval to send the many statistical documents that the Government of Iraq had completed, but had not provided to the World Bank. As a result of Matuk’s efforts, Iraq’s ranking jumped to 34th in the ranking.
More importantly, “Iraqis decided to assume they were the fifth worse rather than repudiate it,” Matuk said. As a result, COSIT recognized the lasting value of the capacity index as a measuring tool for improvement, so much so that the office took a bold step of creating a committee of seven senior staff to prepare a five-year Statistical Master Plan and a comprehensive reorganization of nationwide statistics gathering.
The most important element of the COSIT Conference was to distribute a two-hundred page document for a five-year Statistical Master Plan for 2010 to 2014 that will set Iraqi statistics in top ten percent of non-industrialized countries and the top ten percent of countries with best statistical practices in the benchmarking of the World Bank’s Statistical Capacity Index.
A successful Statistical Master Plan needs to have a consensus within all government units that are users and/or producers of statistics. The proposed plan will be reviewed by all entities. Once an agreement is reached the Minister’s Cabinet will endorse it.
The attendees of the conference discussed and debated the proposed plan throughout the day. Tatweer is planning a follow up series of small workshops in order to collect comments and criticisms on the five-year Statistical Master Plan from the different statistical units of the Ministries and Governorates of Iraq and finalize the plan.
Once the five-year Statistical Master Plan for 2010 to 2014 is finalized, Iraq will have a plan that will triple the budget and the workforce of the actual statistical agency; in such manner that Iraq will be competitive with its peers in the region and with all non-industrialized countries.
Categorization
Topic
- Financial Management
News Type
- Press Release