Abstract

The changing data environment opens new opportunities for official statistics, while also creating considerable challenges. Taking advantage of the strengths of new data sources requires not only new skills of statisticians, but also changes in the institutional setup of statistical offices.

In order to make use of non-traditional data sources, National Statistical Organizations (NSOs) have to inter alia, secure stable access to the data held by external (often private) entities, implement adequate architecture and IT infrastructure and develop a qualified human resource basis.

Since new data sources are often not gathered for statistical purposes, they require substantial methodological and quality-related processing, in order to comply with the standards of official statistics. Thus, advanced data science competencies have to be developed in the NSOs, which naturally links to supporting relationships with academia and research institutes.

The paper explores ways to assist NSOs in identifying needs and developing various aspects of capacity for using new data sources through the work of the Regional Hubs on Big Data and Data Science, and how partners, such as academia, can support these processes.

Regional Hubs have been established in cooperation with the UN Committee of Experts on Big Data and Data Science (UN-CEBD) in four regions – Africa, Asia and the Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Western Asia. Their goal is to foster the use of non-traditional data and data science by the NSOs in their respective regions.

Data science capacity building is a particularly complex and multi-faceted task, due to different starting conditions of NSOs in different regions. The work involves a number of instruments, including strategic counselling on needs analysis, translated into concrete short- and mid-term strategies, with clearly delineated goals; elaboration of training curricula; delivery of training courses on various topics and aspects related to the use of new data sources; mentoring; and the provision of frameworks and guidelines to develop internal capacity building programs by the NSOs. Cooperation with external stakeholders, such as academia, becomes a vital component of the work of these Regional Hubs. Cooperation with academia is of particular importance, as it facilitates knowledge flow between science and statistical community and may also play a central role in providing learning paths for current and future NSO staff. Hence, such collaboration contributes to accelerating the process of integrating new data sources, methods and techniques by NSOs.