On 19 April 2023, the final ceremony entitled: “Building governance through official statistics: a successful project” was held in Hanoi at the facilities of the Vietnamese General Statistics Office (GSO).
The meeting co-chaired by the Director General of the GSO, Dr. Nguyen Thi Huong, and Ambassador Antonio Alessandro, allowed the main results obtained from the initiative to be presented and discussed with a large audience made up of representatives of the main line ministries of the country, international partners and media, as well as representatives of AICS Hanoi, Istat and GSO. In particular, it was highlighted how Vietnam’s statistical system has been strengthened, improving its ability to guide the country’s development process.
The main contributions concern the transfer of technical and coordination knowledge to officials of the GSO and other public administrations on the use of statistical data, the formulation of the national energy balance and the first pilot report on “Indicators of urban environment, sustainability and climate change for Vietnam.” Furthermore, the project financed the conscious use of advanced technologies to guarantee the security, reliability and timeliness of statistical data as well as the creation of a new GSO website. All this was made possible by the transfer of knowledge by Istat which guarantees the GSO the autonomous continuation of the various improvement actions undertaken thanks to the Italian financing.
The second phase of the event was characterized by a lively debate entitled “Intelligent coordination, effective statistics” with the participation of experts from UNSD and ESCAP, media, academia and the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment. The importance of coordination between institutions and policy makers that use the data and authorities and Line Ministries that hold administrative data, of the use of statistical data and non-traditional data was therefore discussed; the increasingly current challenge of having quality, reliable and at the same time updated and timely data available to support decision-making processes and formulate policies to address rapidly evolving contexts and problems, such as environmental and energy ones, was discussed.
The event was celebrated on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Italy and Vietnam, with a wide participation with a hundred guests in person and over forty online.
In her final greetings, the Director of the GSO hoped for a continuation of the collaboration and activities with AICS and Istat. In this regard, it should be noted that the strengthening of Vietnamese statistical capabilities and therefore the availability of updated and reliable statistical data is functional to the country’s development process also thanks to the formulation and monitoring of the initiatives of the AICS Hanoi portfolio, in particular, in the field of change climate, water management, and urban regeneration. Together with the strong appreciation for the work done by Italy by other donors active in the sector, the World Bank and Danish Cooperation have expressed strong interest in working synergistically with Italy in the statistical sector, proposing possible joint initiatives.
