Page 161 - Invited Paper Session (IPS) - Volume 1

IPS124 Hristina A.
1. Introduction
In light of the data requirements for the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable
Development, with its 17 SDGs, 169 targets and over 230 global indicators,
the national statistical systems are facing an unprecedented challenge in
producing data that meets international standards and regulations. As a
result, investing in the sustainable development of statistical capacity has
been identified as one of the five cross-cutting thematic areas of the
Transformative Agenda for Official Statistics (UNSD 2015). Furthermore, the
United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD) recognised that besides investing
in broadening technical skills through reorganisation and re-engineering
production processes and adapting to a rapidly evolving technological
environment, improvements have to be made with regard to change and
project management (ibid.).
Thus, the challenge does not only relate to data production itself, but also
to leadership and management skills. The path towards the SDGs set the
objective to go beyond the traditional production-side approach. In the past,
it has been criticised that statistics related interventions concentrate more
on inputs and activities than on the utilisation of capacities.
Nowadays, capacity development has to be seen as more than only a
one-off event, but as an intervention that focuses on the needs and priorities
of the organisation/system as a whole. Formulating strategic aims and
visions across the entire organisation becomes a prerequisite for successful
development. Proper monitoring and reporting are indispensable parts of
the process, where the focus should be on “celebrating progress and
outcomes” rather than on outputs. This calls for a strategic and long-term
thinking to be applied to the design of both the overall approach and the
specific selection of methods.
The aim of this paper is to outline current trends in statistical capacity
development and to assess where the concept of private-public partnerships
can generate added value in order to achieve sustainable results in the
overall intervention. To this end, the following chapter describes the
methodology used in our research. Subsequently, a case study is presented,
which gives a practical example of how the theoretical framework of capacity
development can be put into practice. Afterwards, the results are
summarised with a special focus on the added value of private-public
partnerships. These findings are then presented in the last chapter and
suggestions for further discussions are provided.

2. Methodology
In recent years, major international development organizations,
governmental platforms and nongovernmental institutions (NGOs) have
developed a variety of approaches and instruments to assess and promote

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