The Doha Declaration issued by the Regional Workshop on the Modernization of Official Statistics, organized by the Planning and Statistics Authority, over two days, stressed the importance of developing and updating statistical systems in support of the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals.

The declaration issued by the participants in the workshop, including heads of national statistical councils, representatives of the United Nations, regional organizations, universities, research centers, the private sector and non-governmental organizations, stressed the need for additional efforts and investments to maintain the infrastructure needed to produce statistics and indicators of sustainable development. It called on governments to support national statistical systems due to their key coordinating role in measuring and monitoring the SDGs.

Participants reaffirmed their commitment to contribute effectively to the implementation of the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals and provide statistics on the indicators of those Goals disaggregated by vulnerable groups, while adhering to the principle of no one left behind, focusing on human beings, and facilitating increased data exchange between government agencies and other partners.

They also affirmed the commitment to using the best means to produce these statistics in the best and timely manner, while ensuring data quality and protecting the privacy of respondents, including the use of administrative, geospatial and alternative data sources as well as remote sensing, social media, "big data" and the adoption of new and accessible methodologies and technologies to accelerate learning and transparency to better respond to the fast-changing ecosystem of data, and to implement the "data now" initiative to bridge the data gap on development .

They stressed the importance of increasing the use of GIS techniques to enhance access to small areas according to the SDG indicators and to actively engage with data producers within the formal statistical system, in partnership with civil society, academia, and the private sector, and to advise on data quality assurance methods produced.

The declaration stressed the importance of exchanging expertize and mutual learning through the mechanisms adopted in the Arab region by ESCWA, the Statistical Center of the Gulf Cooperation Council, the Statistical, Economic and Social Research and Training Center for Islamic Countries ( Ankara SESRIC centre ), the Arab Planning Institute and the Arab Institute for training and statistical research.

It highlighted the importance of fruitful cooperation in the follow-up to the Sustainable Development Goals at the local, national, subregional, regional and global levels.

The Regional Workshop on the Modernization of Official Statistics discussed the importance of developing statistical systems, the role of statistics in achieving the 2030 Global Sustainable Development Goals, non-traditional data sources on official statistics, as well as capacity-building frameworks and strengthening partnerships in statistics, besides the role of innovations in this context and statistical shifts at the moment.

Source: QNA
Image Credit: Gulf Times

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Abdullah Amir

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