Strengthening the competencies of policy makers for better use of data in public policy design1

Abstract

Statistical literacy is one of the main areas of work of the Global Network of Institutions for Statistical Training (GIST) established in 2017. While the scope of statistical literacy initiatives will range greatly from those intended for school children and teachers to those aimed at media representatives or general public, one of the areas where a dedicated Task Team of the GIST set out to undertake a more detailed analysis was related to the core data competencies for policy makers. The adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals by UN member States has led to a growing awareness around the importance of timely, robust, quality and disaggregated data for informing public policies and decisions and providing a solid evidence to address a number of complex policy issues related to ensuring more equitable policy outcomes and more coherence decision-making across different dimensions of sustainable development and different levels of governance from global to national and local. This article presents the results of a survey conducted by the GIST Task Team on Statistical Literacy back in 2018 with the participation of policy makers from various UN Member States, reviews core data competencies for policy makers, presents the free, self-paced e-learning course developed by UN Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR), UN Statistics Division and UN Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) with support from the Swiss Government and using UNITAR’s Quality Assurance Framework, and discusses the ongoing work of the GIST on the inventory of statistical literacy initiatives as a new product developed by the dedicated Task Team.