News[2025]

The three-day crash course aims to equip participants with essential skills in R and RStudio, focusing on practical applications for data analysis for Official Statistics and SDG indicators. It is designed on an interactive platform to enhance a quick start in R, providing participants with practical skills to use a programming language for managing and analyzing data. Through guided exercises, interactive handouts with R and real-world-like applications, participants will gain confidence in using R for managing survey analysis data, for exploring and filtering data sets and for computing simple SDG indicators. 

This e-course is not a replication of the many online R tutorials that already exist, nor a substitute to these courses that should be used to complement the skills learned in this crash course.  It aims at building capacity in national statistical systems for the use of the open source software R for Official Statistic, following the UN's commitment to leveraging open source solutions.

This training will provide NSO heads with leadership skills to improve their effectiveness through greater awareness of their strengths and weaknesses, and the challenges they face both internally within their organization and externally within the larger environment they are engaging with. NSO heads rarely have the opportunity to receive extensive feedback from staff and stakeholders outside. It is necessary to have to open opportunity and understanding to build a comprehensive plan for driving success within the NSO and the NSS, and by extension the data ecosystem. Each individual has his/her own leadership style. Nurturing and developing these styles and skills with keen understanding and awareness of the challenges surrounding them will significantly improve their positive selfengagement, collaboration, and contribution to the field they are engaged in. Leadership can be nurtured and developed if it is enabled to flourish in each individual using best practices built around: (1) assessment tools to help leaders look within and examine their identity, leadership skills and challenges and set developmental goals; (2) challenge-oriented, experiential, team-based activities that leverage their own experiences in cocreating solutions to enhance leadership skills; and (3) support through a peer learning and mentoring model that enable leaders to share their challenges, utilize innovation techniques and chart a course for greater effectiveness. Self-knowledge is an important key to effective leadership.

Climate change is one of the most pressing issues in the Asia-Pacific region. Yet emissions from fuel combustion in the region (and globally) continue to trend upwards due to increased demand for energy. In addition, households and businesses are faced with frequent price shocks in many energy commodities. High quality, consistent data on energy is critically needed to inform effective pathways for addressing issues around energy use and availability, climate change mitigation and just energy transitions.
National statistical offices (NSOs) and ministries of energy of countries in the region have responded to these needs by compiling basic energy statistics, energy balances and energy accounts. However, there continues to be a need to strengthen the capacities of NSOs and ministries of energy to produce and disseminate energy information to better meet the needs of users for high quality integrated data on energy and its relationship to the broader economy and climate change.
The workshop, organized by the United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD) and the United Nations Statistical Institute for Asia and the Pacific (SIAP), with the support of the Office of the Director-General for Policy Planning on Statistical Policy of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications of the Government of Japan, aims to further build capacities in the region for the compilation of energy information in support of energy and climate change policies.

The overall objective of the week-long training is to help participants better understand the use and benefits of Big Data in the production of gender statistics. To that end, the training program will present recent development in the compilation of gender statistics as well as new methods, case studies and processes that can facilitate the integration of Big Data in this process. The training will also emphasize the limitations, constraints and privacy issues inherent to the use of Big, non-traditional or administrative data. Please refer to the attached concept note, which provides a more detailed description of objectives, scope and requirements for the training.

It is well established that healthy ecosystems and biodiversity are fundamental to supporting and sustaining our wellbeing, our communities and our economies. Protecting and properly managing ecosystems is key to ensuring the continuous provision of ecosystem services such as pollination, carbon sequestration, flood protection, etc. Understanding the contribution of nature to our well-being and the impacts of our activities on the state of ecosystems are key for sustainable development.

This e-Learning course introduces the System of Environmental-Economic Accounting--Ecosystem Accounting (SEEA EA), the agreed statistical framework for collecting and organizing information on ecosystems and their relationship to human activity. The SEEA EA provides an integrated statistical framework for organizing biophysical information about ecosystems, measuring ecosystem services, tracking changes in ecosystem extent and condition, and linking this information to measures of economic and human activities. It supports the compilation of indicators for several global policy frameworks including the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the associated SDGs indicators as well as the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. 

The course is being organized by the United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD) and the UN Statistical Institute for Asia and the Pacific (SIAP), under the overall guidance of the UN Committee of Experts on Environmental Economic Accounting (UNCEEA).

The 2025 SNA framework will serve as the internationally recognized standard for compiling economic activity measures. It aims to enhance the understanding of well-being and sustainability while providing adaptable methods to integrate environmental and social dimensions into economic statistics. Critical conceptual and measurement issues, such as in advancements of digital products, the complex interplay between economic, social, and environmental factors, and the intricacies of global trade, have been harmonized and incorporated into the updated framework to a great extent.

As national statistical systems prepare to implement these updates, the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) Statistics Division and the Statistical Institute for Asia and the Pacific (SIAP) will jointly organize a webinar, in collaboration with the Intersecretariat Working Group on National Accounts (ISWGNA) and Project Management Team, to inform participants about the objectives of the SNA update, its implementation strategy, and the key changes introduced in the 2025 framework. This webinar will also provide an overview of the consolidated recommendations for updating the 2008 SNA, ensuring that national statistical offices can transition smoothly to the revised framework. While the 2025 SNA update emphasizes international comparability, the implementation strategy acknowledges country-specific circumstances, including national priorities, data availability, and resource constraints. The discussion will highlight recommendations on how these updates can be implemented effectively, particularly in the Asia-Pacific region, where some economies face significant resource limitations.

The 2025 SNA framework will serve as the internationally recognized standard for compiling economic activity measures. It aims to enhance the understanding of well-being and sustainability while providing adaptable methods to integrate environmental and social dimensions into economic statistics. Critical conceptual and measurement issues, such as in advancements of digital products, the complex interplay between economic, social, and environmental factors, and the intricacies of global trade, have been harmonized and incorporated into the updated framework to a great extent.

As national statistical systems prepare to implement these updates, the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) Statistics Division, the Statistical Institute for Asia and the Pacific (SIAP), and the Pacific Community (SPC) will jointly organize a webinar, in collaboration with the Intersecretariat Working Group on National Accounts (ISWGNA) and Project Management Team, to inform participants about the objectives of the SNA update, its implementation strategy, and the key changes introduced in the 2025 framework. This webinar will also provide an overview of the consolidated recommendations for updating the 2008 SNA, ensuring that national statistical offices can transition smoothly to the revised framework. While the 2025 SNA update emphasizes international comparability, the implementation strategy acknowledges country-specific circumstances, including national priorities, data availability, and resource constraints. The discussion will highlight recommendations on how these updates can be implemented effectively, particularly in the Asia-Pacific region, where some economies face significant resource limitations.

Within the framework of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), gender equality is not only a standalone goal but also one of the crosscutting universal values that underpin the SDGs and a necessary precondition for achieving the goals of the 2030 development agenda. Good quality, timely, comparable, and disaggregated gender data provide the evidence needed to measure progress towards achieving the gender-related SDG goals and targets. The Progress on the Sustainable Development Goals – The Gender Snapshot 2024 produced by the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women) and the Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) shows that while there are notable advancements, including reductions in poverty, narrowing gender gaps in education, and progress toward legal reforms, there remains progress to be achieved across all indicators, with only five years left to reach the 2030 Sustainable Development Goal deadline. 

This e-learning course aims to build capacity in national statistical systems for the development and implementation of Reproducible Analytical Pipelines (RAPs) for Official Statistics.

What is a Reproducible Analytical Pipeline?
Simply put, reproducible analytical pipelines (RAPs) are automated statistical processes (data processing and analysis) that codify to the greatest extent possible the production of official statistics. Common tools that are used to develop RAP include software such as R or Python, and version control management tools such as Git.
Reproducibility is at the heart of the approach. It implies that the outputs can be generated again with any new or revised input datasets using the RAP developed. This also implies drafting documents explaining the RAP that make it possible to build institutional knowledge and use the RAP in the future by new staff.\

Why are Reproducible Analytical Pipelines important for Official Statistics?
All national statistical systems are engaged in the regular, high frequency production of many official statistics. For example, most countries compile monthly consumer price index (CPI). The input data for the compilation of CPI is generally the same from month to month. By developing and implementing an RAP for the compilation of CPI, countries can improve the timeliness and quality of the CPI since automation reduces the time required to clean and analyze the data; it also reduces the chance of errors that could occur when relying on non-automated processes.

Furthermore, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) require that countries use more diverse data sources in the compilation of indicators. The COVID-19 crisis has shown that automated tools can facilitate data analysis and reporting when these sources are updated. These tools, including software such as R and sharing platforms such as GitHub, allow statisticians to streamline data cleaning, compilation, and analysis.

National statistical systems are increasingly using administrative data to compile official statistics. Such data can be utilized to better meet the increasing demands for new statistics and indicators that are highly disaggregated. Administrative data is not collected for the primary purpose of compiling official statistics, and statisticians need to ensure that the data meets certain criteria before using it to produce official statistics. This course provides an overview of administrative data, a discussion of data quality issues and institutional mechanisms to ensure that administrative data can be used in the production of official statistics. The course builds upon content developed for in-person training courses conducted by UNSD and to which members of the Collaborative on Administrative Data have provided valuable input.

CPIs measure changes over time in the general level of prices of goods and services that households acquire (use or pay for) for the purpose of consumption. In many countries, they were originally introduced to provide a measure of the changes in the living costs faced by workers, so that wage increases could be related to changing levels of prices. However, over the years, CPIs have widened their scope and now are widely used as a macroeconomic indicator of inflation, as a tool by governments and central banks for monetary policy and for monitoring price stability, and as deflators in the national accounts. With the globalization of trade and production and the liberalization of the markets, national governments, central banks, and international organizations place great importance on the quality and accuracy of national CPIs, and their international comparability.