ISI - International Statistical Institute
Newsletter Volume 26, No. 1 (76) 2002

PARIS21 Annual Meeting - Report of the ISI Representative

PARIS21 held its second annual meeting in the OECD premises in Paris from 4-5 October 2001. Here follow the remarks and observations provided by Dr. Alain Azouvi, who has kindly agreed to represent the ISI and keep the membership informed about ongoing PARIS21 developments. 

1. PARIS21 organisation 
   Previously, PARIS21 was monitored by an Interim Steering Committee. A new Steering Committee is now in place. Chaired by G. Charumbira from Botswana, it is composed of six international agency representatives, six developing country representatives and five donor country representatives. The next PARIS21 regional workshop, for countries of the Andean Community and Latin America, will take place in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, on February 25-27, 2002. 
   
2. Papers
    On the occasion of the annual meeting, a great many papers have been produced focussing on: national achievements and experiences, PARIS21 task teams reports, the PRSP approach, international organisations initiatives and also, of course on PARIS21 Secretariat papers. All these papers may be obtained, as well as the agenda of the meeting, from the PARIS21 updated website: http://www.paris21.org/htm/OctoberConsortium.htm 
   
3. Substantive matters
    First, one very favourable development is that this second annual meeting has registered the increased and active participation of developing countries. Another positive aspect is the excellent work and follow-up that has been conducted by the PARIS21 Secretariat. Also, several representatives highlighted the positive impact that the PARIS21 initiative has had in helping in the building of the National Statistical Systems in their countries: 
   - The Kyrgyz Republic found the process useful as it has helped in the building of their national statistical capacity; 
   - Similarly, the Andean Community (five member countries) deems the PARIS21 process to be very relevant, namely in terms of advocacy, information exchange and strategy aspects; 
   - Mongolia requests additional assistance from PARIS21, to serve as an international advocate in the development of their national statistical system. 
   This advocacy dimension appears to form an important "value added" element in PARIS21, the suggestion being made that PARIS21 should systematically target donors, politicians and senior decision-makers in recipient countries. 
   On the other hand, some dissatisfaction has also been expressed. 
   One of them is the risk of seeing PARIS21 transformed into a mere formal forum, in which the basic and sometimes contradictory issues of technical assistance would not be sufficiently discussed, such that new orientations for improved statistical technical assistance would not be thoroughly debated. 
   
   Secondly, several participants pointed out the fact that no progress had actually been made since the previous annual meeting, as far as the conditions of technical assistance were reviewed. For instance: 
   - the development objectives are often too sophisticated and do not easily match with the concrete possibilities of implementation in developing countries; 
   - the statistical community is still in a phase in which statistical indicators are often being collected for the sake of international organisations; 
   - generally, there are too many new programs proposed for improving statistical TA, and almost no lesson is ever drawn from past experiences; 
   - in the long run there seems to be a "conflict" between the project and the statistical capacity building approaches: National Statistical Institutes are supposed to provide data for the projects, but are not consulted on statistical priorities or strategies. It may thus happen that the project is eventually viewed as a strategy in itself instead of being only part of a national statistical strategy. 
   
4. Personal comments by way of conclusion 
   For the time being, PARIS21 remains donor-driven. It is the author's feeling that, during the initiative's launching phase, it could not have been done otherwise. One may also add, taking the Poverty Reduction Strategy (PRS) as an example, that the latter is often used as a tool to demonstrate how statistics are important and how national policy makers should devote more attention and funding to it (the example of Kenya PRSP is quite relevant here). However, it remains to be seen how the statistical priorities set up in this PRS frame can be transferred to and transformed into national statistical priorities. 

There does not seem to have been much reflection so far about this type of adjustment and matching. Furthermore, having considered donors' priorities to be legitimate and bearing in mind the validity of their intellectual and financial arguments, there is some concern that in the course of time it will become increasingly difficult to reverse present tendencies and actually return power to the beneficiary countries, and put them, as announced at the onset of the PARIS21 process, "in the driving seat". 

Generally speaking, we would say that a clear distinction has to be made between, on the one hand, statistical indicators and, on the other hand, the setting up of effective and efficient statistical systems. Although they are widely used and disseminated, indicators are only part of the whole picture. They answer technical questions whereas a strategic statistical master plan is built around a policy in the field of statistics. To date, this distinction between the two domains appears often blurred; sometimes one may think that there is a tendency for donors to use the indicators as a proxy for the SSMP. 

To conclude, these issues are the difficult challenges that PARIS21 will have to tackle in the future. 

Alain Azouvi

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