South Africa's role in the development of statistical methodology and practice that can be applied globally is growing, as shown by its increasingly prominent role on bodies such as the UN Statistical Commission.
The collection and interpretation of statistics is not confined to the work of separate national agencies. The internationalisation of statistical practice increasingly allows for comparisons between countries, across regions and continents.
This is important for investors needing to assess the risks and opportunities in different countries and regions. It is also central in the monitoring of social and economic progress across the globe through, for example, the UN's millennium development goals.
For statistics to be useful in these sort of global or international comparisons, they have to be collected, processed and analysed according to common or uniform standards, definitions and classifications.
The development of internationally accepted statistical methodologies is at the centre of the work of a range of international and regional institutions, including bodies such as the African Economic Commission, and the Statistical Commission of the UN.
Last week, I, as statistician-general, represented South Africa at the 37th session of the UN's Statistical Commission, held in New York from March 3 to 10. The commission involves an annual sitting of heads of statistics offices to discuss methodology, content, policy and administration of country, regional and international statistics systems.
The Statistical Commission was established in 1946 and held its first session the following year. Currently, documentation for the commission has to be produced in six languages, reflecting the global character of the statistics system: Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish.
South Africa is one of the five African countries representing the continent. At this session, South Africa was elected to the bureau of the commission, as rapporteur. Next year, South Africa will chair the commission.
The commission is also charged with advising organs of the UN on the collection, analysis and dissemination of statistical information.
At last week's meeting, the Economic Commission for Africa, supported by the five member states from Africa, presented a report arising from the 2006 African Symposium on Statistical Development, which took place in Cape Town during January.
This report warned that, unless the quality of the metadata for statistical collections could be improved in African countries, the basis for assessing data quality, and comparing countries and regions, would remain limited.
Among other things, the report concluded that "despite improved collaboration among international agencies and improvement in the data available to support indicators, the quality and availability of data is not yet sufficient to reliably monitor progress in the achievement of the millennium development goals".
It was in this context that South Africa proposed a resolution on strengthening statistical capacity. This aims to improve measurement and enhance international collaboration on statistics as well as improving locally produced measurement rather than relying on the estimates often undertaken by international agencies.
This resolution specifically addressed the problem of imputation, where local data are not available to support the imputation process; asserted the necessity of transparent methodologies when imputation is undertaken; and called for supporting metadata to comply with internationally acceptable guidelines.
These issues require resolution if countries and regions are to be compared on a reliable basis.
Ongoing development of an international system of statistics is a priority if comparisons between countries, regions and continents are to be meaningful.
The UN Statistical Commission is a central element in the range of institutions - national, regional and global - that support this, and South Africa's role in the work of the commission is a matter of justifiable pride.
Pali Lehohla is South Africa's statistician-general and head of Statistics South Africa. For more information on Stats SA and its statistical outputs, visit www.statssa.gov.
Published on the web by Business Report on March 16, 2006. © Business Report 2006. All rights reserved.