A High Level Advocacy Forum on Statistics will be held next week as the Region continues to place more emphasis on the production and use of quality statistics.
The Forum, the third of its kind in the Region, will be held in St. George’s, Grenada, on 22 February 2018 under the theme ‘Investing in Statistics to build resilience and to achieve sustainable economic growth and development in the Caribbean Community’.
Lead Head of Government with responsibility for Science and Technology, Dr. the Hon Keith Mitchell, Prime Minister of Grenada, will deliver the feature address at the opening of the Forum which will draw participation from senior government officials, other regional and international officials and international development partners.
The Forum will take advantage of the momentum generated with the endorsement of the framework for the Regional Strategy for the Development of Statistics (RSDS). CARICOM Heads of Government the framework last year during their Thirty-Ninth Regular Meeting of the Conference. Their endorsement completes Phase One of the RSDS development plan, which was built on the results of the Diagnostic Assessment of the National Statistical Offices (NSOs) of Caribbean countries done in 2011/2013, and the assessment of the CARICOM Statistical System done in 2016/2017. The RSDS was jointly produced by the Standing Committee of Caribbean Statisticians (SCCS) and with funding support of the Partnership in Statistics for Development in the 21st Century (PARIS21).
The RSDS is aimed at strengthening and improving the availability of quality statistics for evidence-based decision-making across the Region. It is considered to be the Region’s gateway to building resilience and achieving sustainable development that is anchored on sound data.
The Forum will explore Member States’ political commitment to the RSDS, and the areas of greatest needs for the transformation and modernisation of the National Statistical Systems.
Discussions will also focus on resource mobilisation support from international development partners for the upgrade of statistics through the CARICOM RSDS.
The Forum will be preceded by a High Level Seminar on the 2020 Round of Population and Housing Census on 21 February. where implementation of the CARICOM RSDS will again be the centre of discussions.
Presentations will cover Census Management and Planning with the aim of delivering timely, high quality census results. There will also be a focus on Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and its role in Census data collection, processing and dissemination, and enabling ICT applications in the roll out of the RSDS.
Participants will also focus on governance arrangements to transform and modernize the CARICOM Statistical System as well as promoting and sustaining a culture of statistics.