Saint Lucia: Experience in Undertaking an NSS Review – Approach, Challenges and Current Status

By Edwin St Catherine, Director of Statistics

Motivation to conduct 2012 NSS Review in Saint Lucia

• Recognition of the Need to have a strategic plan for the development of Statistics over the coming five years

• Reflect on progress made, achievements, weaknesses and strengths and to plan ahead strategically

• Don’t think I had properly been informed about NSS at the time

• Agency willing to fund the review • UNDP TRAC II Project: Strengthening National Planning and Implementation

Capacities in Caribbean SIDS with Access to an Integrated Data Framework for Governance, Social and Climate Risk Management.

Motivation for the OECS RSS - 2013

• The OECS (Organization of Eastern Caribbean States) Commission had just been formed after it was agreed at the political level for the eight OECS states to form themselves into an economic union.

• Need to reconsider the role of the NSS in this new Economic Union

• Funding from the World Bank through its Trust Fund for Statistical Capacity

Building was available. The assessment was done over a 2-year period from 2013 – 2014 and the final report as presented in June 2015

• Expected to contain components of an NSS review for national and regional purposes

Reviews Intended to Deliver:

• Independent, critical and in-depth assessment of aspects of the statistical system

2012 NSS 2013 – 2015 RSS/NSS

legal frameworks, institutional structures, dissemination policies and outputs, and user needs and satisfaction levels

SWOT analysis of the national statistical system

NSS institutional structures, NSS dissemination policies and outputs NSS user needs and satisfaction levels

SWOT analysis of the regional statistical system, along with a number of recommendations designed to facilitate the forthcoming envisioning and strategizing phase of the RSDS process, within the context of the vital role that statistics is destined to play within the implementation of the OECS Economic Union

NSS for Saint Lucia 2012 • 1. Organizational development and management

• Report Recommendation: Review and revise statistical legislation • Yes, Caricom generic Law

• Report Recommendation: Establish mechanisms for coordination and effective management

• Report Recommendation: Establish a National Statistical Council • This aspect has proved to be most difficult given the limited depth of statistical expertise

in the island-states • Small number of official public or private serving on these committes

• Report Recommendation: Restructure the Central Statistics Office, particularly in information technology

• Report Recommendation: Adopt a core work program

NSS for Saint Lucia 2012 • 2. Statistical infrastructure

• Report Recommendation: The development and use of a master sample would represent an important step in improving the use of sampling as a tool in gathering household data

• For the past fifteen years Saint Lucia has conducted a quarterly labour force survey using

its master sample frame and this has allowed the conduct of surveys using scientific sample to occur quickly and efficiently while reducing respondent burden.

• We also continue to strengthen the GIS unit within the CSO, converting now EDs into

Blocks for more efficient Census enumeration.

NSS for Saint Lucia 2012

• Report Recommendation: Creation of a register of corporate entities, rather than pursue the development of a broader register covering all businesses.

• We have signed MOUs with Tax authorities, our national insurance, company

registrar etc and we are completing the development of a business register software to facilitate the maintenance of our registry.

• Recommendation to focus exclusively on corporate entities was important to recognize but it was not our intension to exclude any size business we obtained from data sharing arrangements using MOUs

NSS for Saint Lucia 2012

3. Data development Report Recommendation: Gaps exist in the availability of data in respect of poverty and living standards. • In response to this the CSO conducted last year the Survey of Living

Conditions and Household Budget Survey 2016. We have produced several important data outputs from this survey • CPI expenditure levels by COICOP category and CPI Shares to allow the rebasing of

the CPI to Jan 2018 from Jan 2008 and as an input into our SUT which we are currently upgrading

• Monetary poverty statistics • MPI (Multi-dimensional Poverty Statistics are still to be produced in addition to the

upgrading of the monetary poverty methodology which we have been using.

NSS for Saint Lucia 2012

• Report Recommendation: What is lacking is a coherent and developed infrastructure for data management, storage and effective data dissemination

• Difficult issue for any SIDS to address. There is not only the issue of having the right IT personnel to deal with this issue there is also the issue of the cost of licenses for software and hardware, the issue of the role of IT within the statistical office to the extent that in many cases it is control by the central government.

NSS for Saint Lucia 2012

• We have therefore had to rely on a number of software tools • Eurotrace for the management of trade data

• World Bank Software Survey Solutions on tablet computers or through the internet leveraging the use of the cloud and an on-premise web-server for survey data collection

NSS for Saint Lucia 2012

• 4. Information technology • Report Recommendation: Adequacy of IT Equipment. Personnel etc,

adopting Database systems

• Personnel • Three persons directly responsible for IT at the Statistical Office at the moment

• The Director – Functions partly as Chief Information Officer

• Database Systems Engineer

• IT support technician

NSS for Saint Lucia 2012

• Database Systems/Software

• On SQL Server :- • Trade databases using Eurotrace

• CPI Database using the Price Index Processing System originally developed by the IMF

• Hotel and Restaurants Producer Price Index

• Census 2010 Data exist in multiple formats

• Dev Info Database of Statistical Indicators

• Business Register which uses data inputs from the Tax Office and National Insurance Cooperation

NSS for Saint Lucia 2012 • On Microsoft Access/Excel:-

• Vital Records are managed in MS access. This includes, births, cause of deaths, marriages, divorces etc

• National Accounts are mostly a system well coordinate excel spreadsheets built upon the collection of quarterly national accounts indicators which we now collect on a continuous basis. This is the basis for the production of quarterly GDP every quarter.

• For the development of the supply and use table we have been working with Statistics Canada in the development of an MS Access software to manage all of the links to the data sources required for its development.

• Imports and Exports Data • Balance of Payments Data • Household Income and Expenditure data from the Survey of Living Conditions and

Household Budgets 2016 • Data from the Department of Inland Revenue

NSS for Saint Lucia 2012

• On Statistical Software (SPSS/Stata/R) • Import/Export Price Indices is a program written in R which is still under

development

• Quarterly Labour Force Survey Datasets stored and analyzed using SPSS for data analysis and tabulation and Stata of the annual production of a multi-dimensional poverty index

• Census 2010 – Collected in TELEform which is a forms processing software. Tabulated and disseminated in SPSS and REDATAM, this is a database system developed by CEPAL for the online dissemination of Census and Survey Data

• MICS 2012

• Collected in CSPRO, tabulated in SPSS

NSS for Saint Lucia 2012

• Other specialized statistical Software for GIS and Meta Data Management

• ESRI Arc GIS Desktop - Management of GIS data, management of ED

boundaries in preparation for the next Census, Statistical Mapping on the dissemination side

• Nestar Metadata Software: For the maintenance of metadata on survey dataset for eventual publication to the web of metadata based on ISO/SDMX standards

NSS for Saint Lucia 2012 • TRAINING:

• member states of the OECS face challenges as the pool of personnel is limited

• Specialization in particular aspects of statistical functions is not feasible given the small pool of staff

• Support received at the regional and sub-regional levels is critical.

• The key regional and sub-regional agencies involved in promoting statistical capacity building are: the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank (ECCB), the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) and the IMF-managed Caribbean Regional Technical Assistance Centre (CARTAC).

• They provide access to technical assistance in the broad field of statistics. In addition to these support measures, ad hoc assistance has been available from other international agencies such as UNICEF, WHO, ILO, etc.

RSS Support for NSS

OECS RSDS 2017-2030: Status Strategic Priorities Phase 1: 2017-2020

Achievements Immediate Plans (2017-18) partners

Design and formalise the OECS Regional Statistical

System (RSS)

Develop OECS Regulations for Official Statistics World Bank

UNSD

Consolidate and fortify national statistical systems Strengthen statistical capacity in Agriculture Planning

Units;

FAO

Support to Member States to education statistics; UNICEF

Join and respond to the data revolution Transitioning to CAPI: training and supply of tablets;

Data documentation training; Metadata Editor to prepare

documentation according to the Data Documentation

International (DDI).

Support Member States with executing Census 2020;

Support to Member States to implement CPA;

Support to Member States to conduct SLC, HBS, LFS;

Support t Member States to collect Earth observation

data;

Deploy GIS programme and technology

World bank

UNDP

CDB

Extract insights and tell the stories Launch or OECSInfo2.0

OECSInfo2.0 App UNICEF

Trumpet and value official statistics OECS Statistical Advocacy and Communication Plan;

OECS Statistical Advocacy Video library: household

surveys; business surveys;

Training to NSOs to develop communication plans and

advocacy material;

Support Member States to develop Advocacy and

Communication Plan;

Statistics Canada:

PRASC