Improve professionalism in statistics

THE BBS was formed in 1974, when statistical units under different ministries were pooled under Ministry of Planning. In the following year, the Statistics Division was formed to coordinate the work of BBS at the higher level of the government. Renowned statistician Dr. Ghulam Rabbani was posted as the Secretary of the Statistics Division and the Director General of the BBS. In 2002, the Statistics Division was abolished and the BBS was placed under Planning Division of the Ministry of Planning. No action had been taken to strengthen BBS and make it an independent body. In fact, since Dr. Rabbani's retirement, the post had been occupied by officers of different discipline and not all of them have been practicing statisticians. It seems to be taken for granted that professional statistical work can be done by anybody.
The present government reinstated the Statistics Division in 2010. During this time, the cadre strength of BCS (Statistics) Cadre increased from 107 to 633. Officers of BCS (Statistics) Cadre were promoted and came to the leadership of the organization. Technical Committees were formed for each sector of the BBS. For the first time those committees were headed by an independent non-government person/academics having professional experience in the concerned sector.
Some of the prominent work initiated during this time were (i) Population and Housing Census 2011 using ICR machines and digital maps, (ii) Early dissemination of poverty data using Household Income and Expenditure Survey 2010 (HIES) data, (iii) Preparation of Poverty Map, (iv) Preparation of National Strategy for Development of Statistics (NSDS), (v) Finalization of Statistics Law, (vi) Starting rebasing to improve National Accounts data and increase the area of GDP, (vii) Introducing global pilot of Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) 2012,etc.
In addition to these statistical programs, BBS started disseminating all the findings of censuses and surveys through its website. In 2012, BBS officials started working on modernizing both data collection and data dissemination. Instruments with indication of GPS were introduced to collect price data for providing indicators showing quarterly inflation.
The statistics produced by the BBS have often been the subject of criticism because they do not always align to the administrative data collected by other agencies. The science of statistics requires estimations using probability analysis and a full understanding of the statistics produced by the BBS requires an understanding of the methodology. To increase understanding, users were made aware of the constraints of data sets through the publication of percentage of error for every estimate. Raw data was made available and processing was initiated to make online payment available to allow users to download data. BBS started collaborative data analysis programs with different research organizations.
The aforementioned accomplishments show that the BBS can be run efficiently if the correct guidance is available. Based on this evidence, the time has come for the BBS to be run by the BCS (Statistics) Cadre officers. Otherwise, all the efforts taken during recent years to develop the professionalism of BBS officials will go in vein.
The government should upgrade the status of the BBS and develop a National Statistical Organization (NSO) as an independent constitutional body. Government can constitute a commission to examine the issue and submit recommendations for upgrading the NSO into an independent organization.
The NSO could be named as the National Statistical Commission (NSC). There could be three Bureaus under the NSC. The first one is the Bureau of Statistics, which will be responsible for administering all the censuses and surveys and produce reports. The second one is Bureau of National Accounting, which will be the only user of the data produced by BBS and prepare all economic indicators, and the third one is Bureau of Human Resource Department, which could be entrusted with all the administrative work and skill development trainings of the NSO. There could be Research Unit directly working with NSC. The organization must be lead by a reputed statistician.
All data users should speak up. Time has come for the citizens to participate in nation building effort and urge the concern authorities to promote professionalism of this technical institution.

The writer is a former secretary.
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