1. Statistical Capacity Measurement at the World Bank
Grant Cameron
World Bank Group
PARIS21 CD4.0 Workshop
December 2018

2. What is Stats Capacity Development?
Capacity to collect, compile, and disseminate to inform national and international policy decisions.
Capacity of the NSS: the group of statistical organizations and units that collect, process and disseminate official statistics on behalf of national government.
Supports transformation that is generated and sustained over time from within.

3. Why assess SCD? To assess statistical performance on a global scale
To foster inter-country comparisons
To inform national planning and strategic processes
To inform program/project design

4. WBG family of SCD assessment measures and tools
SCB Indicator (updated annually) Systemic Country Data Diagnostics diagnostics (updated when SCD is revised) Country profiles (updated when SCD is revised) Customized assessments (ad hoc, upon request)
ALL

5. Tools follow a common structure
Long-term goals
collect, compile, and disseminate to inform national and international policy decisions
Produce credible statistical products
Maximize user experience
Continually adapt to changing needs, opportunities, threats
Outcomes
Enabling Environment (Legislation, inst’l arrangements)
Organization (Structure, processes, capital)
Individual (Skills, working culture)
Supporting elements

6. Remarks
Tough to measure capacity directly, many intangibles, many subjective elements
Fit assessment effort to the purpose
Link to best practices and global standards

7. Measurement challenges
Measure/incentivize improving national statistics through better inter-country data sharing
Measures of formalization of roles of other Data Ecosystem statistical producers
Clients objective is to reduce “distance to the frontier”
Reflecting that political support & senior Management Capacity shifts faster than other supporting elements

8. Thanks