The monitoring of social, economic and environmental development requires the use of data that is comparable across countries and over time. This is realized in the 2007 edition of the Statistical Yearbook for Asia and the Pacific. For the first time in its 50 year history, the Yearbook presents data compiled from global sources maintained by United Nations agencies and other international organizations. The use of "international", rather than "national", data allows for three major innovations, which together have resulted in a completely revised ESCAP flagship publication: the organization of the Yearbook in chapters that address social, economic and environmental topics, the presentation of indicator values aggregated to regions and other groups of countries of interest, and the use of charts and analytical text to facilitate the interpretation of indicator values and trends therein.
The ESCAP secretariat hopes that the use of internationally comparable data and methodological transparency triggers discussion on the benefits of following international statistical standards and methodologies at the national level. Data on neighbours and other countries with similar circumstances and levels of development provide irreplaceable benchmarks for evidence-based policy planning. At the same time, comparable indicators provide yardsticks for citizens to hold their decision makers to account, and promote good governance and prudent management of public resources.
The new Yearbook would not have been possible without the considerable efforts of international agencies in collecting the data and ensuring that the figures are as comparable between the countries and over time as possible. Nor would it have become a reality if it were not for the efforts of national statistical systems to produce the original data. By taking data from international agencies, ESCAP does its part to reduce the response burden on national statistical systems, contributing to the freeing of resources for better use.
For nearly as important as what is covered in this Yearbook is what could not be. A mere glance reveals the extent of data gaps in some tables. What is more, a large number of useful indicators could not be included in any form because the data availability criterion could not be met. In other words, the indicator selection was often guided by the availability of data, rather than the requirements of the development topic addressed.
Small statistical offices do not have resources to conduct an extensive programme of regular surveys that would be needed to obtain all these data. In one of its core areas of work, ESCAP provides training and facilitates, in partnership with a number of donors and development agencies, the strengthening of official national statistical systems. Another theme of the Statistics programme of ESCAP, in the production of the Yearbook and capacity building initiatives alike, is to make better use of and widen the audience for data that have already been collected, usually at a considerable cost.
The Yearbook includes in a consistent manner the definitions and aggregation methods for all indicators. The original data sources are reflected with the precision available to ESCAP. The methodological notes at the end of the Yearbook provide details on how the aggregates were derived and what kind of imputation, if any was used in their calculation by ESCAP. The importance of this kind of information about data, which statisticians call metadata, cannot be overemphasized in a comparative inter-country study like this.
This Yearbook is available online at the ESCAP website, http://www.unescap.org/stat/data/syb2007/, where its data and other ESCAP data are downloadable in a user-friendly format. Yearbook readers are encouraged to use the online form available on the site to send feedback in order for the secretariat to be able to make the next Yearbook, and other statistical information services, even better. Comments on the overall usefulness of the revamped publication and the areas covered in it are particularly welcome. |
