DECEMBER 2022 | ISSUE 2

GLOBAL NETWORK OFINSTITUTIONS FORSTATISTICALTRAINING (GIST)

This Issue
Message from the chair
Welcome new members & new
co-leads of the task teams
Interviews with GIST members
UN SDG:Learn spotlightcourses
New partnerships andproducts
Upcoming events

MESSAGE FROM THE CHAIR
On behalf of the Global Network of Institutions for Statistical Training(GIST), I am honored to welcome you to the second issue of the GIST
newsletter. This issue highlights some exciting new developments, tools,
and products that we have been collaborating on for the increased
benefit of the global statistical community. As you know, the overall
objective of the GIST is to facilitate collaboration among members of the
network in the delivery of trainings on statistics in a more harmonized
and standardized manner, as well as to improve effectiveness of thesetrainings through maximizing their outreach. In this issue, we would liketo share with you some of our successes since December 2021.

Dr. Mitali Sen - Chief, Technical Assistanceand Capacity Building Branch, International
Programs, U.S. Census Bureau

During the 2022 U.N. Statistical Commission meetings, we had a well-attended, productive, and engaging
side event on What Makes National Statistical Training Programs Sustainable? In addition, GIST sharedsome of the major accomplishments, including a growing range of courses available on the UN
SDG:Learn platform, new micro-learning videos and other listings, guidance on setting up sustainabletraining centers in countries like Ethiopia and Ghana and building a statistical literacy inventory.
Discussions at this side event formed the basis of deliberations and outcomes at the Annual Meeting of
GIST. Upon the advice of GIST members, the GIST Board put in motion several new initiatives that willlead to a more effective network.
First, to expand our global reach, statistical contributions, and the transformational power of GIST, we are
excited to welcome several new members into the network. You can read more about them on the next
page of this newsletter. Each institution brings a wealth of experience, tools, products, and regional
knowledge that will enhance the work of GIST.
Second, we have made changes in our workflow to increase participation and input from the members
and reduce the burden on the U.N. GIST secretariat. From this year, each task team will not only have a
Lead, but also a Co-Lead assisting with running the task team. Together, they will be responsible forcalling the meetings, setting the agenda, and accomplishing the work. Learn more about our Leads andCo-leads in this issue.
Third, at the beginning of each calendar year, the GIST Board, in consultation with all GIST members,
drafts a work plan to address needs. This year’s work plan included development of a framework forassessing the needs of national statistical systems, drafting a paper on best practices in remote learning,
exploring certification systems for training, and developing an inventory on statistical literacy. The threetask teams have made good progress on all these fronts, and we look forward to sharing the work withyou during the 2023 UN Statistical Commission meetings.
Fourth, most of GIST materials are accessible only in English. We would like to change this going forward
and hope our GIST members bring some resources to bear on providing translations in other common
languages like, Arabic, French, and Spanish.
I hope you enjoy reading this issue and can use the information here to strengthen your institution’s
capacity to produce, disseminate, and use the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) indicators for thedevelopment of your country.

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Welcome new GIST members andnew co-leads of the task teams
New GIST members
In the course of 2022, GIST has expanded to include more members. There are many and various
reasons for this expansion. One is as a response from the UN Statistical Commission to ensure that
regional training institutes are involved, another to have closer ties and connections to initiatives thatwork on related matters and a third to benefit from the knowledge and work that new partners are
doing in global provision of official statistical training
New members include:
Regional training bodies: AFRISTAT and Pacific Community’s Statistics for Development,International and organizations: UN Population Fund, UN Women, Inter-American Development
Bank and the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data
Country statistical offices that build capacity beyond their own border: U.K.’s Office for National
Statistics, Central Statistics Office of Ireland and the National Administrative Department of
Statistics of Colombia (DANE)The International Statistical Literacy Project, a sub-entity of the ISI which already is a member

New task team co-leads
In efforts to expand responsibilities to more GIST
members, GIST has now co-leads who work
actively with the task team leads in progressing thework. Leads and co-leads for each task team are
as follows:
Task team 1: Addressing NSO demands:
Lead: Mamadou Cisse, IDEP
Co-lead: Dag Roll-Hansen, Statistics Norway
Task team 2: Online gateway and e-learning
community of practice
Lead: Shailja Sharma, UN SIAP
Co-lead: Cristina Petracchi, FAO
Task team 3: Statistical literacy
Lead: Elena Proden, UNITAR
Co-lead, Bianca Walsh, IBGE
The new co-leads are also joining the meetings ofthe GIST board.

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Meet the lead from task team 1
Mamadou Cisse holds a PhD since 2008 and is a training officer of the African
Institute of Economic Development and Planning (IDEP), which engages incapacity building for African countries and is the training arm of the Economic
Commission for Africa (ECA). He is also the lead of GIST Task Team 1, which
focuses on better response to needs and requests from the NSOs.

Please describe your expertise and experience related to the mission of GIST and the task team.
One of our main training areas at IDEP is statistical data analysis, which is very relevant for good planning, including
for sustainable development. Our participants are from National Statistical Offices (NSOs). We are divided into twoareas; technical and leadership trainings. To ensure we understand the request of the National Statistical System(NSS) we first organized meetings. We then propose a curriculum and develop it to answer the request. We are
happy to share the experience we gain from working with countries to enhance their capacities.
How can we better assist the data community and identify their needs for statistical training?
The most relevant need is related to SDG indicator measurement in Africa. The first step is to collect the relevant
data, but it is very urgent for African countries to diversify the ways of obtaining them. We can’t analyze data, if we
don’t have it, and we don’t have enough. We need to use every data source we have and manage them effectively.
We have administrative data, big data, and data collected from surveys. We always try to use the data collectedfrom surveys, but I think our methods are not good enough to ensure that we organize every survey to collectsufficient data. We need to reduce informality and collect administrative data automatically. We might also use big
data sources to complete some types of data collection. I think it is a huge issue and challenge for Africa to have upto-date, relevant data for meaningful analysis.
On the other hand, we need not only technical assistance, such as organizing training activities, but a more urgent
matter is leadership. We need leadership to raise awareness that NSOs need improved opportunities to collectimportant data. That being said, we also need fundraising activities to do that. Without enough funding, nothing will
work. We need to lobby at the policy level, and more support from the UN to developing countries is needed to help
them better organize the collection .
What motivates you in your role as a GIST member?
Before I joined IDEP, I worked at ENSAE de Dakar, a national training school and a sub-regional training institutefor statistics and economic analysis. We usually received over 1000 applications and recruited around 30 students
from 10-12 French speaking African countries for the training department I lead. As I was the head of the training forIngenieurs in this school for ten years, I got to know the curricula of the statistical training schools which were linked
to the Senegalese NSS and helped me understand their needs. When I joined IDEP, we provided continuous
training in data analysis because I had learned it was a real need for the NSS. IDEP was my contact point with
GIST. IDEP has been involved in capacity building since 1963 and has trained many African officials. Today
enhanced statistical capacity is one of the key areas of IDEP training activities.
What hopes do you have for task team 1 of GIST?
The first thing we need to do is to provide languages other than English. There are for instance many French
speaking countries who also need training. Secondly, we need to organize surveys related to training needs moreregularly to collect data from the NSS because their needs vary. For example, African countries, particularly French
speaking countries, are impacted deeply by the Ukraine crisis. They need to have relevant data to know the impactof this crisis, which are instantaneous requests. We are elaborating our curriculum to be more proactive and agile
and that should lead us to be recognized as an institute that can help the NSS. We need to work closely with these
NSSs by organizing regular surveys to ensure that what we are doing is continually relevant to them. The work weare doing in task team 1 of GIST on development of standardized training needs assessments and sustainabletraining programs at national level are relevant in this context.

4New partnership with IAEG-SDGs
At the 53rd session of the UN Statistical
Commission, the Inter-agency and Expert Groupon SDG indicators (IAEG-SDGs) was requested
to make guidance and learning materials for thedifferent SDG indicators easier to find for themember countries.
Following this, the IAEG-SDGs agreed to use
UN SDG:Learn as a common platform foragencies to share learning and capacity building
resources on SDG indicators and monitoring.
The work to add more learning resources wasstarted in late 2022 and will continue in 2023.

Some agencies are both custodian and GIST members and have therefore already added resources.
FAO for example has already added over 20 courses and 9 microlearning materials to the UN
SDG:learn statistics pages, many of them available in several languages.

In focus: Statistical literacy
The task team on statistical literacy (task team 3) agreed in
2021 to develop an inventory of statistical literacy initiatives.
As of December 2022 it had 21 initiatives listed targeting
various audiences and providing different product types in avariety of languages.
The work is greatly benefiting from a partnership with theInternational Statistical Literacy Project. It is a project
initiated by the International Association for Statistical
Education (IASE), which is the education section of theInternational Statistical Institute (ISI)

More materials are expected to be added in thecourse of 2023.
If your organization has examples you would
like to add, please don't hesitate in reaching out
to the GIST secretariat.

5Getting to know GIST members:
Brazilian Institute for geography andstatistics
Bianca Walsh is a technical assistant to the Director of the National School of
Statistical Sciences (ENCE) of IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography andStatistics). She represents IBGE in the Global Network of Institutes for
Statistical Training (GIST) in two working teams: statistical literacy and elearning. For the first one, she is a co-lead. She is also a member of the UN
Committee of Experts on Big Data and Data Science for Official Statistics,
particularly working with the Task Team on Training, Competencies andCapacity Development.
Please describe your involvement in GIST and why GIST links to the work of your institution.
I have worked as a member of two task teams since 2019—statistical literacy and e-learning. When I first joined
GIST, I was the coordinator of the Training and Development Department within the National School of Statistical
Sciences (NSSS) at IBGE (Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística). We developed a lot of e-learning
products and were also focused on statistical literacy projects, so there was a strong link to GIST. I have sincechanged positions, working as technical assistant to the director of NSSS, representing the school in the projects of
the UN Big Data, also connecting to the academic community and our formal education offers.
How would you position your institution in terms of statistical training providers in the nation?
We envision becoming the reference for the national statistical system and we are increasingly occupying that
position. Institutes from other municipalities and countries have come to learn from our courses. For example, wehave a survey skill development course. At the end of the course, students go to the field and develop household
surveys. The course came from Canada in 1997, and we adapted it for Brazil. Hearing of our success, othercountries have come to us in order to develop something similar, so we are also a reference in statistical training,
especially for Portuguese-speaking African countries.
How would you address training needs for your own staff?
We have revolutionized capacity-building needs assessment in the past years. Before 2016 we sent a form and thedepartments returned with their needs. No questions were asked, it was not really a needs assessment. They
thought of the solution before thinking of the problem really. From 2016 up to last year we worked on improving theapproach. We started talking to the managers, then to staff members, asking them, trying to learn more about thereal gaps in terms of performance, thinking of what we want to achieve and what we had, also linking it to thestrategic objectives of IBGE. We simplified the questionnaire and took a more qualitative approach. Then on thesubject matter, we asked detailed follow up questions to understand the exact needs rather than a general topic.
We received around 800 responses, and through further assessment reduced it to a list of 200 needs. The list
changed people’s mindset as it indicated that capacity-building is not always necessary. Sometimes the problem isin the way work processes are organized, so the solution requires changes in the management of the processes.
Other times it's a matter of knowledge management; the transmission of information may be disrupted because
someone retires and knowledge is lost.
We needed to make our list more effective and concise, however, so we invited representatives from different
directories to discuss how to address everybody's needs in a unified way. People from various departments often
discussed the same topics in Big Data, for example, and, in a magic moment, we arrived at one solution fromworking together on ten different needs. It was a significant achievement, and it worked well. For me, it was like a
goodbye because I was one of the leaders, and I was leaving the department.

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Do you have trainings that focus on engagement with users?
We actively engage with users, for example with decision makers, people fromgovernment looking for information or partnerships. We also interact with media all
the time. We have therefore developed courses for our IBGE staff on how toengage with the users. Two focus on public policy, evaluation and planningrespectively, for these, half of the participants are internal and the other half fromother institutions who interact with us. A third course is on engagement with themedia.
For users, we have a course on how to handle the databases of IBGE, and oursystem to create tables out of these. This is targeted towards researchers,
journalists and the general public that deal with data and want to understand how
our databases work and how they can extract relevant data. The dissemination
department of IBGE also leads a project to help increase statistical literacy among
school children and teachers, called IBGE Educa. We are also promoting thisthrough GIST
What kind of collaboration would you see that can develop together with other members?
There are many areas that interest me. As we talked about, an area that really interests me are needs assessments.
For me, it's always something we need to keep studying and are struggling to achieve, so I would like to share ourexperience and listen to how others approach the matter. There are also many new developments in how trainings
are provided, I’d like to continue sharing experiences on e-learning formats and training of trainers, for instance, inthe context of training large groups of people, including enumerators. Statistical literacy is also an interesting topic,
we really consider this as part of our mandate to help people consume our data, and generally understanding what
data means and how to be critical to numbers presented to them.
We value statistical literacy in the Brazilian NSO and consider it a part of our obligation to society, including thosethat aren’t usually involved in statistical literacy. We are not only data producers, we have a responsibility to prepare
people to use and benefit from our data. I am pleased with the task teams of which I am a part and, if I have time, I
would like to join other task teams, like the needs assessment team, which would be profitable for exchanging ideas.
This participation in GIST is a pleasure for me and it's important for NSSS as it’s a wonderful opportunity to shareexperiences and do some benchmarking.

Some of the courses that IBGE offer can also be found on UN SDG:Learn(all in Portuguese)7

UN SDG:Learn spotlighte-learning course
A platform with learning materials from SESRIC
A recent addition to the UN SDG:Learn platform is information about and a link
to SESRIC’s flagship statistical skills development program. The “SESRIC
Statistical Capacity Building (StatCaB) Programme” aims to identify statisticalneeds and capacities of NSOs and enable exchange of experts among OIC
countries by implementing different types of activities (i.e., training courses,
technical missions, webinars, workshops, etc) in order to strengthen their
NSSs. Many of the exchanges and learning materials are afterwards posted on
the platform with open access for everyone who wants to explore.

Demographic and social statistics

Learning materials are available in Arabic, English and French

E-learning courses offered by Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS)The Demographic and Health Surveys program (DHS) offers a number of courses.
Many of these have now also been added to UN SDG:Learn to reach additional
audiences. As some of the visuals on this page show, there is a large variety ofcourses available. They include an Introduction to the DHS Program, DHS Dataset
Users, Essential Reading and Understanding DHS Program Tables, Essential
Statistical Concepts for Understanding DHS Program Data, Introduction to Nutrition
Indicators in DHS Surveys.
The targeted audience is those interested in research and analysis related todemography, public health, economics, sociology, or other social sciences andthose who are planning to use DHS data, such as academics or students, or staff
conducting policy or program-oriented research.

8Getting to know GIST members:
The Statistical, Economic and Social Research andTraining Centre for Islamic Countries (SESRIC)

Please describe your involvement in GIST and why GIST links to the work of your institution.
SESRIC is a founding member of GIST and has been a task team member in addressing NSOs’ needs since its
establishment. SESRIC plays an important role in strengthening and enhancing the National Statistical Systems(NSSs) of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) countries for them to produce better national statistics andtherefore assist policymakers in implementing better national policies and plans. In this connection, we provide asubstantial contribution to strengthening the technical capacities of the NSOs of OIC member countries and also acts
as a networking institution between the institutions providing assistance and the beneficiaries. Due to the pandemic
outbreak, we have converted everything into virtual mode, and now reach a wider audience.
How would you position your institution in terms of statistical training providers in the region?
SESRIC, through its StatCaB programme, collects information from NSOs of OIC countries through a questionnaire
available in three official languages of the OIC (i.e., English, Arabic, and French), assessing their needs andcapacities and matching these. The programme is constructed on the south-south cooperation principles as we
facilitate the transfer of statistical knowledge of our member countries to others by organising short-term statisticaltraining courses, technical missions, workshops, and more recently, online activities. The training providers are fromthe NSOs of our member countries who indicate their readiness to provide the training(s). We act as a mediator anda facilitator. When matching, we consider their preferences, languages used, socio-economic development levels,
geographical proximity, and equitable regional distribution of the OIC countries. We also cooperate frequently withfellow international organizations, including the UN.
How would you address training needs for data users to ensure people are being sufficiently trained tointeract with policymakers and the general public?
We facilitate training for the benefit of NSOs, but some of our member countries are taking proactive steps to reachwider audiences and inviting other stakeholders. Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, we have held
trainings in a virtual format that broadens the scope of the audience.
What kind of collaboration would you see that can develop together with other members?
In the past, we have collaborated with other GIST members, such as UNSD, Paris21, FAO and UN regional
commissions to develop training series. For example, we held workshops on statistical coordination within the NSSs
and 2020 round of population and housing censuses with UNSD and we worked with FAO to examine food
imbalances and food insecurity experiences.
One area we would like to explore further is how to better engage in the virtual format. It has brought moreaccessibility to more people, but the challenge is measuring knowledge acquisition and maintaining contact with ourtrainees. There are many strategies in the literature, but they require resources to support instructional designers forthe time needed to develop things such as e-learning modules. We would also like to work with the task team on
statistical literacy to tackle issues regarding regional audiences. While we have limitations as a regional institution,
we are trying our best to engage more people and to fill as many statistical training gaps as we can. We hope to workwith other members and are always willing to share our experiences with them.
What materials would you like to share with other GIST members?
We have uploaded our StatCaB Reference Materials Repository information to the UN SDG Learn system under“Microlearning” (also also referenced on the previous page).

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Upcoming events
The GIST will as every year of the UN
Statistical Commission hold its Annual
meeting. A side-event promoting the work of
GIST is also planned. Please stay tuned formore information on these events.
Members of the GIST have also submitted
proposals and been accepted for sessions at
the UN World Data Forum, the 64th ISI World
Statistics Congress and the IAOS conferencein Zambia in 2023.

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GIST WEBPAGE: https://unstats.un.org/gist/
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LIST OF MEMBERS: https://unstats.un.org/gist/Membership/List-of-members/
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TWITTER: @UNDataForum or @UNStatsYOUTUBE: UNStats
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This newsletter is compiled by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs,
Statistics Division