The project closure ceremony “Building governance through official statistics: a successful project”

On April 19, 2023, at the headquarters of the General Statistics Office (GSO), GSO in collaboration with the Italian Agency for Development Cooperation (AICS) in Hanoi held the Closure Ceremony of the project “Viet Nam – Improvement of the National Statistical System”, which is financed by AICS and implemented by the Italian National Institute of Statistics (Istat). The Closure Ceremony was held face-to-face and online with the theme “Building governance through official statistics: A successful project”, and co-chaired by Dr. Nguyen Thi Huong, Director General of the GSO and H.E. Mr. Antonio Alessandro, Ambassador of Italy to Viet Nam.

Attending the closure ceremony were the leaders of GSO, leaders of Units under GSO; The members of the Project Management Board and the Coordinators of the Components; Leaders and civil servants, officials of the Units implementing the project Component; Leaders and main officials of GSO’s units; representatives from relevant ministries and branches. International representatives attending the closure ceremony including from the Italian Embassy in Hanoi; The members of the Management Board and the Coordinators of ISTAT; international organizations. Representatives of press and television news agencies also attended and reported.
In February 2018, the project “Viet Nam – Improvement of the National Statistical System” was approved by the Italy Government and implemented over a period of 3 years from 2018 – 2021, with five Components: Component 1: Building institutional capacity; Component 2: Energy Statistics; Component 3: Environmental statistics and climate change; Component 4: Dissemination of statistical information; Component 5: Information and communication technology.

Director General Nguyen Thi Huong Speaking at the opening ceremony of the Closing Ceremony

The project “Viet Nam – Improvement of the National Statistical System” has contributed to strengthening the Statistical System in Viet Nam in order to improve the statistical information necessary to drive the development process of the country. In particular, the technical assistance to the GSO has ensured the enhancement of its statistical capacity to develop, produce and disseminate up-dated and reliable information on topics of crucial importance for the country and the international community such as Energy, Environment, sustainability, and climate change, as well as to strengthen crosscutting sectors such as Institutional Building, Dissemination and Information and Communication Technology (ICT). After nearly 5 years of implementation with the high efforts of GSO and ISTAT, the Project has completed 100% of the workload and achieved good results as the project’s objectives.

Speaking at the opening ceremony of the Closing Ceremony, Director General Nguyen Thi Huong expressed that the encouraging results in the past five years are thanks to the close and good cooperation from AICS, ISTAT, and GSO’s efforts and commitments, towards the goal of improving the operational efficiency of the GSO, providing accurate, complete, timely, and transparent statistics to serve policies and the people to gradually improve the position of GSO in the international statistical community. The successfully implemented project has contributed to enhancing organizational and management knowledge, and production ways, using statistical data according to modern standards, changing working styles, and receiving and implementing technical assistance.

H.E. Mr. Antonio Alessandro, Ambassador of Italy to Viet Nam speaking

The program of the Closing Ceremony focused on two main contents: The presentation of the project’s results and the High-Level Talk session “Intelligent coordination, effective statistics”.

The program of the Closing Ceremony focused on two main contents: The presentation of the project’s results and the High-Level Talk session “Intelligent coordination, effective statistics”.
In the first part of the program, the participants listened to the five components of the Project presenting the results achieved in the past five years, specifically:
(i) The presentation “The Importance of Coordination in the National Statistical System” of Component 1;
(ii) Presentation on “Step by step improvement of Vietnam Energy Statistics System according to international standards” of Component 2;
(iii) Presentation on “Urban Environmental Statistics and Climate Change in Vietnam – Current Situation and Prospects” of Component 3;
(iv) Presentation on “New website to introduce, communicate and identify the General Statistics Office” of Component 4;
(v) Presentation on “Modernizing Information and Communication Technology (ICT) to ensure accurate and timely statistics” of Component 5.

The results show that the Institutional Capacity Building Component has been conducted in close coordination with ministries and sectors, piloted the Lime survey toolkit to survey organizational structure, functions, tasks, and activities of Statistics of ministries and branches. The Energy Statistics component has gradually improved the Vietnam Energy Statistics System according to international standards, according to which the GSO has made a report to the United Nations on energy in Vietnam; Enhance methodology in compiling Vietnam’s Energy Balance sheet and energy-related indicators. The Environmental Statistics and Climate Change Component has compiled a pilot report on “Sustainable Development Indicators on Urban Environment and Climate Change in Vietnam”. This is the first time, GSO has compiled a complete and detailed report on environmental issues. The Dissemination component achieved clear positive results when the Project was implemented for 18 months. Experts from the ISTAT supported the GSO in designing a new website with a friendly interface, simple access, and easy-to-use to introduce, communicate and identify the GSO branding and exploit statistics most effectively. The Information and Communication Technology component also gained remarkable results with the application of advanced technology in statistics production to ensure accurate and timely statistics.

The guests in the high-level talk session with the topic “Intelligent coordination, effective statistics” shared their perspectives on statistics work and statistical coordination activities

At the high-level panel “Smart Coordination, Effective Statistics”, the participants listened to guest representatives from the United Nations Statistical Office (UNSD), the Economic and Social Commission for Asia- Pacific Ocean (ESCAP), representatives of National Economics University, the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, Vietnam Economic Review shared, exchanged and discussed. Through the session, the national statistical offices’ role was confirmed in the context of a new and changing data ecosystem; the role of quality data, in the data ecosystem is a key factor for policymaking in the region; The role of the media in recognizing the added value of official statistics, the need for timely dissemination of data leading to the use of informal data, the data ecosystem that provides the data real-time informality through popular new tools such as social networks, the Internet; The importance of in-formal statistics, the collaboration between producers and users of statistics to produce data more relevant to the needs of end users, and recommendations to increase strengthen the coordination role between data producing agencies and the holders of administrative data sources.

Concluding remarks, Director General Nguyen Thi Huong highly appreciated the cooperation project with Italy which has helped improve the statistical capacity of GSO in different fields. With a high spirit of cooperation, strong commitment, and timely coordination, GSO and ISTAT have effectively and successfully implemented the Project’s activities. Although the Project has ended, the results of the cooperation are still ongoing. This will be the foundation and opportunity for GSO to continue to receive new support from AICS and ISTAT in the coming time to maintain the sustainability of the Project and improve the capacity and position of Vietnam Statistics in the region and the world, helping the GSO to gradually achieve the goals set out in the Vietnam Statistical Development Strategy from 2021 to 2030, with a vision to 2045.

Overview of the Closing Ceremony