Page 181 - Special Topic Session (STS) - Volume 2

STS479 Saidi H.
 Strengthening the NSS coordination activities to increase the
accountability of various actors;
 Supporting the NIS to exercise its responsibility for technical
coordination and quality management to fully play its role of assisting
other statistical producers in the entire process of statistical
production;
 Revision of the procedure for drawing up the national statistical
program;
 Strengthening the technical capacity of the NIS to assume its role as
the central executive body of the NSS and its technical coordination
responsibility.
 The twinning program with the EU has taken into consideration only a
part of these recommendations judged by the experts and the various
evaluations as priorities. NIS and other SSP have continued work on
the other components based on other tools and mechanisms for
technical and financial assistance.

II. Legislative and institutional framework of the Tunisian statistical system
The NSS consists of four actors: the NIS, the National Council of Statistics
(NCS), the SSP and the training institutions. It is governed by the 1999 law and
the organizational decrees of the NSS as well as certain circulars and memos
organizing the statistical activity in the country. The Tunisian legislative
framework has enabled the various statistical production structures to better
manage and govern the statistical activity in the country, particularly
concerning the clarification of powers and the partial adherence to the
fundamental principles of official statistics. However, despite the strengths of
this law, the assessments have led to some shortcomings and difficulties,
including two important aspects. The first aspect concerns adherence to the
fundamental principles of official statistics and the African Charter on Statistics
as well as EU good practices, mainly in relation to the professional
independence of statisticians and production structures. The second aspect
concerns the NSS governance, since it has not been able to guarantee a clear
division of responsibility for the coordination and management of the system
between the main actors, notably the NCS and the NIS. The current
organization has created major dysfunctions that limit the effectiveness of the
NSS and the quality of its productions. These dysfunctions have negatively
impacted the effectiveness of the NIS and the strategic role of technical
coordination by limiting the necessary initiatives to develop the SSP. As for the
NCS, the dysfunctions noted in terms of coordination are explained by the
large number of SSPs (48 SSPs), which makes it very difficult to draw up a
National Statistics Program. Access to micro data for research and in-depth

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