Approaches to

Statistical Capacity Development in

Myanmar

Than Zaw
Deputy Director General
Central Statistical Organization

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 Part 1: Background
Past situation of statistical capacity
building initiatives in Myanmar’s NSS

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 Situation in the past

• Many different statistical training initiatives across

statistical units of the NSS
• Not harmonized or coordinated
• Often ad-hoc and focused on specific statistical tasks

 Resulted in very different level of capacities across

the NSS, and this impeded cooperation within NSS

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 Assessments

Various assessments and peer reviews of

the National Statistical System (NSS)
identified lack of systematic and
continuous professional training for
government statisticians as one of the key
hindrances of statistical development.

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 New National Strategy for
Development of Statistics

NSDS acknowledges this and incorporates

operational target: “training needs
assessment conducted and training
program for government statisticians
developed”.

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 New Statistics Law
Approved by Parliament October 25, 2017

New Statistics Law also

acknowledges this and assigns
the Central Statistical
Organization (CSO) the
responsibility to “upgrade
statistical skills and
competencies of staff engaged
in statistical activities across the
National Statistical System of
Myanmar”.
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 Part 2: Recent initiatives
Steps taken by CSO to improve the
situation

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 Training Needs Assessment
• Started with comprehensive assessment of
training needs across the NSS.
• Approach from two angles: interviewing
statistical unit management about their
needs but also individual-level testing of staff
competencies (very different results!).
• Key findings:
1. Need for more systematic and harmonized training
across NSS
2. Past training initiatives’ effectiveness and hindered
by lack of common set of basic competencies of NSS
staff
 important to focus on this level first to make all
statistical work and training more effective
3. Also need to build skills of data users 8
 Development of statistical training
curriculum
• 29 course modules across 3 different certification
levels for NSS statisticians:
– Level 1 focusses on basic competencies
– Level 2 focuses on core technical skills
– Level 3 focuses on advanced technical skills
• Course module for data users
• Seminar series:
– One for members of the NSS to present their recent work
and achievements
– One for visiting international experts and NSS members
that attended international conferences to share latest
international trends and developments 9
 Setting up Statistical Training Centre

• Delivering the training

curriculum for the NSS
• New dedicated training annex
constructed recently
• 1 main training room, 1
seminar room, 1 computer lab
• Dedicated training centre staff

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 Part 3: Lessons learnt
Sharing of lessons learnt that may be of
interest to other countries

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 What makes capacity development (CD)
programmes successful?
1. Conduct comprehensive training needs assessment first to know the
full situation. Approach assessment from two angles, top-down and
bottom-up. (If asked, statistical units will often request the most
advanced trainings, “we need multivariate regression analysis
training”, whereas staff may require basic competencies without
which advanced training cannot be effective.)
2. Based on needs assessment, tailor CD programme to specific
context.
3. Take existing recurring trainings into account to avoid overlap of
certification systems.
4. Include data users in statistical capacity development programmes if
possible.
5. Try to build communities of practice (e.g. seminar series).
6. Move away from ad-hoc, donor-driven CD to systematic and 12
 How can partnerships support the
development of national statistics?
• Partnership with data producers of the NSS is important to
ensure CD programme delivers to real needs and that
there is NSS-wide buy-in to a programme.
• Partnership with data users is important. They need
statistical capacity development, too.
• Partnership with Development Partners can help to start
up a systematic CD programme, but the programme
should be designed to run independently by the CSO/NSS
in the medium term.
• Partnership with statistical training institutions outside
the NSS is important to exploit synergies. However,
academic training and professional training often requires
very different approaches and content. 13
How do you prioritise between national statistical
needs and international requirements?
Prioritization should happen before the Capacity Building stage,
so ideally not a problem when designing CD programmes.

Prioritization of Data production Data Data use

data needs and analysis dissemination

Capacity
Capacity Development for
Development for
data producers
data users
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Looking forward to closer cooperation in the
statistical field!

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