Ethiopia's Statistical System Development

The use of statistical information in Ethiopia can be traced back nearly half a century. Demand for statistical information for economic management grew after 1957 and by 1960; a United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) resolution to which Ethiopia was a signatory made the collection of statistics a regular government activity. In the years since, their application has grown across a range of activity. The major data users were surveyed in 2008 to indicate what roles statistics played in carrying out the work of their organizations. According to the result of the survey, about 65% of the organizations use statistical data for monitoring policy implication, about 60% for policy design and about 53 % of organization to international reporting obligations. As one see from this result, the role of evidence based policy making has been well recognized by Ethiopia and a great emphasis has been given towards generating reliable and timely statistical information. This is mainly because the policies and decisions made based on reliable statistics will facilitate the development and democratization process in progress.

Challenge

The assessment of the Ethiopian Statistical System revealed that there are three critical challenges to the system. These are: lack of capacity, lack of a sustainable methodology and problem with the source of data. The lack of capacity is mainly manifested by limited focus on in-depth analysis and utilization of results, problem in the timeliness of statistical data, unavailability of time series data and lack of capacity to conduct surveys as planned. On the other hand, the lack of sustainable methodology is challenged by lack of business sampling frames to monitoring the business sector and lack of appropriate methods applied to environmental statistics. Finally, the problem with the source of data is observed by duplication of material in household surveys, the existence of contradictory estimates from data produced on similar variables. In addition, the quality of data is challenged both by the capacity issues as well as implementation of sound statistical methodology. The lack of awareness on the importance of timely and quality statistical data has also been observed as one of the major problems in the statistical system of Ethiopia. The issue of availing the data on a user friendly fashion was also one of the challenges in the Ethiopian Statistical System

Approach

Building public sector capacity to collect and use statistical data empowers countries as they seek to exercise stronger public management leadership. To steer the development process toward the goals they have defined, countries need stronger capacity for statistics production and use.

The National Statistical System (NSS) in Ethiopia has limited capacity and not all data needs can be satisfied. Many of the demands are costly, while others would be very difficult or impractical to collect. Recognizing that the system needed strengthening, the government identified several goals for the NSS: To provide quality and timely statistical data obeying the specified basic principles of statistics; To keep the continuity of statistical data production; To maintain the integrity and high standard of statistical work in the country; And to become a reliable source for policy development. The drive for such improvement led to formation of the National Strategy for the Development of Statistics (NSDS). The NSDS covers the entire statistical system, not just the work of the Central Statistical Agency, although the latter played a lead role in drafting the new strategy. With the financial help of the World Bank, the CSA laid out a vision to have “a National Statistical System providing credible statistical data for better decision making in support of sustainable socioeconomic development” whose mission would be to “produce and disseminate nationally coordinated, timely and good-quality statistical data for planning; monitoring and evaluation; for socioeconomic analysis, research and policy formulation.”

The NSDS, which follows on from the already phased-out Medium-Term Statistical Programme (MTSP), is different in content, scope and coverage. It was approved in May 2009 by the Statistical Council, which is headed by the Minister of Finance and Economic Development. In the process of designing the NSDS, high-level commitment was provided by the political leaders and senior government officials (key policy and decision makers) who made or ratified the major decisions (about, for instance, reforming and restructuring the NSS, revising a legal framework, and creating coordination arrangements). Country ownership was asserted through this leadership, integration of the NSDS into national development policy formation, and a consensus-building/advocacy process. Furthermore, the road map for the design of the NSDS was developed nationally, where the input came from throughout the NSS system and other stakeholders

Results

The NSDS has been designed to address the threats and weaknesses of the current NSS, preserve its strengths, and seize opportunities to develop the country’s statistical capability. Hence, it builds public sector capacity to collect and use statistical data and help ministries, departments and agencies to exercise stronger public management leadership. The process of drafting the NSDS also helped identify new data needs or gaps in the area of agriculture and environment; prices, national accounts and welfare monitoring; manufacturing, trade and industry; and social statistics.

Accordingly, the following main points are under implementation.

Implementation of the Statistics Law

The first theme of the NSDS relates to the coordination of the National Statistical System (NSS), and requires the establishment of a NSS coordination unit in CSA. This unit would manage the development of common standards, classifications and definitions; negotiate legal agreements between each NSS partner and the CSA; agree any support to be given to partners by CSA; and manage the data quality assessment process. Establishment of a methodology and support unit in the Central Statistical Agency for quality assessment and NSS capacity building will have sufficient clout to develop legal undertakings with other ministries, departments and agencies and to enforce quality improvements within the CSA and the wider national system. This authority will be reinforced by a memorandum of understanding between the CSA and its NSS partners. Accordingly, the CSA has formulated a new directorate called the National Statistical Coordination, Standards and Quality Assurance Directorate mandated to accomplish the above mentioned activities.

Develop data quality procedures

Quality assessments are the responsibility of the National Statistical Coordination, Standards and Quality Assurance Directorate established at the CSA. Each statistical collection is assessed periodically, according to a pre-determined timetable. The results should be made available, and an improvement programme agreed. Members of the quality assessment panels may include experts in the subject matter from academia or research establishments as well as suitably qualified civil servants trained in the use of the quality assessment framework. To aid quality improvements and adherence to the statistical standards, ministerial statistical units are under establishment in each NSS partner. For this the development of the Ethiopian Data Quality Assessment Framework is expected to be completed by the end of October 2011.

Enhance advocacy and use of statistics

The NSDS preparatory process highlighted problems in stakeholders’ knowledge of the availability of statistics. More publicity for statistical products is required, publication calendars should be made available for all NSS producers, and all statistical releases should be accompanied by press conferences to raise the users’ awareness of statistical products. Access and use of data should be enhanced by a common website for the NSS which provides a one-stop-shop to users, and more training given to users. The training would include hands-on support to use survey databases and software.

Methodological improvements & statistical modernisation

The gaps which were agreed as priorities were for statistics relating to the environment and commercial farming; non-sedentary populations about whom little is known; and for a range of price and economic statistics, particularly the construction sector and import and export indices. Improvements in the business register and integrating register data sources are considered as a first step, and developing modeling techniques for ‘difficult’ sectors is recommended. Improving demographic projections was a priority for many NSS partners who need accurate denominators in order to express statistics obtained from registers and administrative records as ratios or percentages. The agricultural and population censuses will continue to be conducted on a 10 yearly cycle. Sample survey programmes will continue on a cycle similar to the MTSP, but the contents of different surveys would be rationalized and expanded to include more information about the informal sector, cottage industries and small-scale farming of spices and vegetable crops.

Capacity developments in the NSS

The supply of trained statistical staff will need to be increased, as staff retention is becoming problematic and demand for information and communication technology (ICT) and statistical staff is growing among the international community in Ethiopia. ICT staff is particularly difficult to appoint and retain in the government service and they are essential to upgrading and improving statistics in ministerial statistical units. Continually upgrading skills is important, and training are being used as an incentive to staff to remain within the government service. A full training needs analysis of the NSS is underway and an in-service training programme put in place Due to the high turnover of staff, knowledge management is vital. Systems are set in place to document fully the statistical value chain and to maintain up-to-date metadata. This will ensure continuity even when staff moves on from their current positions. Technological improvements can vastly improve data quality, timeliness and accessibility. A programme of technological improvement is underway, including computer assisted data capture and improving networking in the NSS.

Relationship of NSDS to the Growth and Transformation Plan (GTP)

The policy need of statistics has been reviewed to ensure that priority needs are met, to properly monitor the progress of the GTP that the government of Ethiopia launched as its development plan for the next five years. In the development process of the GTP, the Ethiopian government utilized statistical data more adequately as bench mark as well as to set up the targets. The following examples show how statistical data has been used in the GTP for evaluating achievements and setting up targets in macroeconomic and agricultural sector for example. Moreover, the need for statistical data is further emphasized to better monitor and evaluate the GTP. Accordingly the following activities of the CSA was put in the GTP document.

Partners

The demand for statistical data in Ethiopia has been increased more than ever. This demand cannot be addressed by the effort made by the Central Statistical Agency only. Therefore, the need for a strong partnership to sustain the implementation of the NSDS is well recognized. Accordingly, a strong working partnership has been established with all sectoral ministries and development partners. The statistical council having high level political decision makers as a member is being used to strengthening this partnership. Moreover, engaging the development partners to support the NSDS is showing a promising result to achieve most of the improvement activities proposed in the NSDS.

Lessons Learned

The Government of Ethiopia has made it clear that poverty eradication is its main development agenda by preparing three PRSPs based on the Agriculture Development Led Industrialization

(A DLI) strategy. To steer the development process toward the goals it has defined, the government needs to garner the moral, political and financial support to strengthen its capacity to generate accurate, relevant and timely statistics and use them in Managing for Development Results (MfDR). Such data is essential fuel for powering results-based monitoring and evaluation systems. Introduction and implementation of the new National Strategy for the Development of Statistics are designed to improve the process by building user awareness of and confidence in official statistics through the timely release of relevant data while improving coordination and coherence among NSS producers and stakeholders. The NSDS is a building block for developing the culture and institutional means for realizing the MfDR agenda.

The public sector service delivery reform process and government’s Business Process Reengineering lend opportunities to amplify the process by improving management information systems and results management in all data ministries and agencies. This process should be coordinated from a system-wide perspective to further strengthen the NSS.