On September 6th, a technical workshop “Data innovation initiatives for policy making” was held, at the premises of the General Statistical Office (GSO), the national Vietnamese Statistical Agency, in the framework of the initiative “Data for now”, co-financed by Italy and executed by UNSD, Statistical Division of the United Nations Department for Social and Economic Affairs (UNDESA).
In the last years cascading crisis such as COVID pandemic and natural disasters caused by climate change force governments to adopt and implement responsive policies which require a multi-dimensional analysis of inclusive, accurate, disaggregated and timely data. In order to do so, traditional methodologies of collecting data, such as surveys and census are accompanied with “innovative data”, big data, such as satellite imagines and geolocation data.
The initiative Data for Now, launched by the UN Deputy Secretary General Amina Mohammed at the UN General Assembly, in September 2019, was created in order to assist in partner countries National Statistical Institutes, Line Ministries and governmental agencies working in statistics, in their activities of analysis and production of timely and reliable data to monitor and track results in the achievements of SDGs. In October 2021 Italy approved a contribution of 1,275 MEUR to the initiative in 8 African and Asian countries: Etiopia, Morocco, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, Tunisia, Jordan, Pakistan and Vietnam. During the workshop GSO, UNSD and main donors active in Vietnam in the statistical capacity building sector: Italy, World Bank and Germany, discussed about the main areas where the Vietnamese Government needs technical assistance for the identification of innovative indicators in order to adopt effective policies for the achievement of SDGs and leave no ne behind.
Italy is active since many years in the statistical capacity building sector in Vietnam; the National Statistics Institute (ISTAT) signed in 2014 a Memorandum of Understanding to strengthen the cooperation with GSO, providing technical assistance and sharing statistical methodologies and best practices. In 2018 the project “Improving Statistics” was launched with the aim of strenghtening GSO for the production of data in energy and climate change sectors, for the dissemination of statistical data and for enhancing ICT system. Thanks to this contribution, highly appreciated by GSO, remarkable results have been achieved, among them it is worth to mention that in August 2021 the first Energy Country report was edited and published according to UN and Oslo Group standards, filling the gap for Vietnam.
