GIST empowers National Statistical Offices to adopt country-owned, innovative and sustainable approaches to capacity-building

Many NSOs use traditional approaches to training by either nominating their staff to participate in international or regional customized formal training programmes or delivering their own. The needs, however, remain significant and undergo a fast-pacing change due to technological innovations and opportunities created by new data sources among other. The cost of delivering formal training programmes is high preventing from more employees to benefit from them while many NSOs in developing countries are also facing high staff attrition levels. In addition, the approaches are often fragmented, driven by the external supplies and opportunities. Staff are not always incentivized or have no possibilities to take responsibility for learning. There is often a lack of willingness or systems to share knowledge. The need for more strategic, forward-looking, nationally driven, sustainable and agile approaches to developing core competencies within National Statistical Offices and Systems has been broadly acknowledged.

Vibeke Nielsen who has been leading UNSD’s work on STAT has first convened the most recent pilot countries pointing to differences in contexts and inviting them to share their experiences and immediate outcomes. Kevin Bistoquet, Deputy CEO of Seychelles NBS has shared the experience of his country where, due to its small size, the entire NSO team was fully involved in the STAT exercise leading to the production of the institutional learning plan and a draft competency development strategy while aiming to address some of the identified challenges such as resistance to change. Morocco’s experience shared by Hasnae Fdhil, Head of Communication and Cooperation at High Commission for Planning, has highlighted how an improved use of integrated, including informal, learning, prioritization of job-relevant skills, continuous learning, onboarding new employees, and better plugging in international cooperation to support national capacity building efforts can become a game-changer in a larger statistical organization in addition to the existing use of in-house experts as trainers. Sarah Bonaneri Omache from Kenyan Bureau of Statistics, the latest addition to the STAT process, has shared how the STAT process helped her Organization initiate a more needs-oriented and strategic approach to statistical capacity-building. While most of the work is still ahead, the STAT pilot has reconfirmed the need to rethink the current approaches and learn from other STAT countries.