The Government Statistician Douglas Kimi has recently participated in the annual Pacific Statisticians’ Leadership Forum in Brisbane, Australia.
The two-day forum, held from the 8th to the 9th of May 2023, provided an opportunity for National Statistical Office (NSO) leaders in the region to share information, discuss common challenges and explore opportunities for collaboration.
Teresa Dickinson, Australian Bureau of Statistics, ABS, Deputy Statistician, hosted this year’s Forum as the Executive Sponsor for the ABS Pacific Program, along with Vince Galvin, StatsNZ Chief Methodologist.
In support of key priorities outlined in the Strategic Framework for Pacific Statistics, the 2023 Forum focused on the lessons learnt from the pandemic years, how NSOs might now position themselves to best support post-COVID recovery and how they can lead in the circumstances of new policy landscapes and a changed operating environment.
In particular, the COVID era has brought an acceleration of the transition from the provision of official statistics sourced through traditional surveying techniques, to providing data accessed from alternative approaches.
The Forum explored the benefits and risks of this transition and how NSOs might manage this change and separately, also examined lessons learnt from the most recent round of Population Censuses.
The objective of the 2023 Pacific Statisticians’ Leadership Forum was to reflect on lessons learnt during the COVID years and to share ideas on how to increase the effectiveness of NSOs to manage change in the post-COVID environment.
The Forum provided leadership coaching in key concepts relating to understanding the national policy context and operating environment, engaging with risk and managing change, and understanding the contemporary role of the NSO and its approach to data management.
Key expected outcomes include;
- Greater statistical leadership capability for NSO heads and senior staff to lead Pacific Island Country (PIC) National Statistical Systems;
- Greater appetite to transition from traditional survey techniques to alternative sourcing of data;
- Greater ability to make data and statistics available in ways that support national priorities;
- Greater awareness of the importance of managing relationships with key stakeholders to strengthen the understanding of the role of statistics in informing decision-making; and
- Stronger links between key development partners throughout the Pacific region including ABS, Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), Statistics New Zealand (SNZ), PICT NSOs, World Bank, IMF and the Pacific Community (SPC), amongst others.