Office develops reliable data strategy

 THE use of statistical information has increasingly become important in the development of policies, interventions and measuring achievements, an official says.

The National Planning and Monitoring Department, in conjunction with the National Statistical Office, are now in the process of formulating a statistical strategy called the National Strategy for the Development of Statistics (NSDS).

Speaking to stakeholders and development partners yesterday at a consultation workshop in Port Moresby, National Planning and Monitoring Department acting secretary Julianna Kubak said the NSDS was the government’s plan that would form the basis for the coordination and collection of quality, reliable and responsive data throughout the country.

Kubak told them the NSDS would not only just help in the implementation of national plans but all plans at the lower levels of government and cater for the needs of the private sector both domestically and internationally.

“The NSDS will accommodate fitting legislation and institutional frameworks for PNG’s national statistical system (NSS) to give more influence to provide reliable and timely statistics, bridge the statistical capacity of the NSS in terms of human resources, financial capabilities, infrastructure and improvement programmes.

“It will strategise to produce relevant statistics and indicators to measure the country’s development plans, policies and goals, leverage funding from both within the country and internationally to conduct relevant and timely surveys and censuses and maintain sound administrative statistics periodically.”  The NSDS will be completed by the end of 2014 as planned by the government.

“To fully complete the NSDS, three provinces have been selected to test the statistical assessment questionnaire, which NSO will be conducting. The provinces are NCD, Western and Morobe.”

Kubak said by June 2014, action plans for all sector agencies should be drafted based on the statistical agency assessment and by then PNG’s NSDS would be drafted for implementation come 2015.