Good, reliable statistics are essential for measuring progress in reaching development goals. They provide essential information about the effectiveness of policies and investments. They help governments improve their policies and investments, and to be accountable to their parliaments and citizens about the delivery of development results. And they help donors to monitor overall progress in their areas of support and assess the results of their aid.
However, many developing countries have weak statistical systems and mechanisms for measuring results. Even in countries where donors have supported data collection activities to produce relevant data, these efforts have often given priority to short-term data needs and have been piecemeal, uncoordinated, and were not designed to improve statistical capacity.
There have been important initiatives to change this situation. The most notable is that with support from the international community, especially through the PARIS21 initiative and the Marrakech Action Plan for Statistics (MAPS), many countries have developed National Strategies for the Development of Statistics (NSDSs). The EU Code of Conduct on Division of labour in Development Policy from 2007 attempts to show how donors can better coordinate their actions to improve capacity generally.
The constraints and concerns on capacity building were emphasized by countries attending the Third International Roundtable for Results in Hanoi in January 2007. In response, following extensive discussions with development partners in 2007 and 2008, a new Statistics for Results Facility (SRF) has been created to provide renewed momentum to scale-up investments in statistics, and to make these investments more effective.
The EU Code of Conduct on Division of labour in Development Policy