Implementing Principles for National Reporting Platforms: Lessons from Cambodia

1. Principles and Guidelines for National Reporting Platforms:Experience Implementing the .Stat suite in Cambodia Chan Samrith Thy, National Institute of Statistics Cambodia Abdulla Gozalov, United Nations Statistics Division

2. Conference on National Reporting Platforms • National Statistical Offices have stressed the need for improved access to data in the context of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development • Strategic Area 4 of the Cape Town Global Action Plan: “Dissemination and use of sustainable development data” • In January 2018, UN Statistics Division called a Conference on National Reporting and Dissemination Platforms • To review best practices, discuss and showcase possible solutions, and identify ways forward for their implementation • Attended by over 60 representatives of national governments, international agencies, NGOs, and vendors active in the area of statistical data dissemination • The conference produced Principles of SDG Indicator Reporting and Dissemination Platforms and guidelines for their application.

3. Principles and Guidelines for National Reporting and Dissemination Platforms • Outlines recommended approaches for the design and implementation of a national data platform • Submitted to the 49th session of the UN Statistical Commission as a background document • Living document • Updated and resubmitted to the 50th session of UNSC

4. Principles and Guidelines • Four Principles • Clear institutional arrangements and management • Fitness for purpose • Sustainability • Interoperability and statistical standards • Twelve guidelines • National Ownership; Collaboration; Multilingualism and Accessibility; User-centered Design; Data Communication; Data Disaggregation; Modularity and Extensibility; Standardized Interfaces; Scalability; Metadata; Open Data; Linked Data

5. UNSD-DFID Project on SDG Monitoring • Overall goal to make SDG indicators available to the broadest possible audience • Aims to establish or improve dissemination and reporting in the 20 project countries • Affected by the phasing out of the DevInfo project • Originally intended to use DevInfo in the initial stages of the project • Selection of dissemination platform guided by the Principles and Guidelines • In this context, OECD, UNICEF, PARIS21, and UNSD joined forces to pilot the migration of a DevInfo database and establish SDG data exchange in Cambodia, one of the project countries

6. Pilot project goals • Assess the feasibility of using SDMX standards and tools to: • With an emphasis on supporting SDGs.

7. The missions • March 2018 • Structured SDG Data. • Structured Education Data. • Uploaded data to .Stat Suite. • October 2018 • Structured Demography Data & uploaded data to .Stat Suite. • Built skills in data standards and tools good practices.

8. The missions • December 2018 • Structured national level SDGs. • Structured Agriculture data & upload to .Stat Suite. • Deepened skills in data standards and tools good practices. • May 2019 • Conclude pilot, with full migration of CamInfo data. • Coordinate future phases with Data for Development (D4D) community. • Create a customized Data Structure Definition (DSD) to include Cambodia’s national indicators and disaggregation, and subnational areas. • Work together to structure VNR indicator data in SDMX. • Populate CamStat with VNR data. • Consider an SDG-specific data portal.

9. The implementation experience • Required technical missions to implement over 14 month period • Extensive and complex clean-up of the data had to be undertaken • Complex data structures had to be developed • Training provided by the international agencies in subjects such as the fundamentals of data modeling, SDMX Information Model, .Stat Data Explorer and DLM

10. Data Flow Assessment Over the course of the missions, the team worked with the NIS following the steps below to assess the existing data flow mechanisms with which, the NIS interfaces and which results into dissemination of official statistics, along with infrastructure and capacity needs: • Assessment of indicator availability and their organisation • Delineating “As-Is” process flow for indicator dissemination on digital platforms • Process identification • People identification • Entry Criteria and Inputs (pre-requisites) • Activities descriptions • Process flow diagrams • Assessing the dissemination platforms currently in use, their main features, advantages and disadvantages • Presence and need of data modelling practice • Assessing general IT infrastructure including data bases

11. Conformance with the Principles and Guidelines • CAMSTAT meets requirement for storing and disseminating data • The new system well regarded by the management • Overall, high level of conformance • Fitness for Purpose, Interoperability and standards • National ownership, multilingualism, data disaggregation, … • Further effort required on Institutional arrangements • Major topic during the missions and through a UNFPA consultancy • Further effort required to ensure sustainability

12. Lessons learnt • Expert knowledge of SDMX required with current interface and tools to model, map and upload data structures and data • Different requirements for dissemination vs reporting when using global DSDs • Code descriptions • Unused dimensions • National extensions • NIS will need further technical assistance to use and maintain CAMSTAT • Much effort required on SDMX artefact maintenance and versioning

13. Next steps • Move CAMSTAT from Pilot to Production • Establish an SDG portal linked to CAMSTAT over an SDMX API • Adapt flows and processes in NIS to regularly update CAMSTAT • Adapt flows throughout NSS to regularly update CAMSTAT • Secure technical support to assist implementation and capacity building 1-2 years • Continue to implement new .Stat Suite components • Provide capacity building to the NIS and other agencies of the National Statistical System to ensure sustainability over the long term

14. THANK YOU