## Statistics Norway’s approach to capacity building - and lessons learned

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**Canonical URL:** [Statistics Norway’s approach to capacity building - and lessons learned](https://www.imf.org/-/media/files/capacity-developement/d4d/june-2023/05-statistics-norway.pdf)

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### Development Cooperation in Statistics Norway (SSB)
- A separate division since 1994. Staff of 12 persons.
- Broad based support to national statistical systems (NSS) in partner countries – built on institutional cooperation with sister agencies.
- Provide support in subject areas identified by the partner countries and where SSB has special competencies – use of our own experts.
- Traditionally economic statistics/national accounts, macroeconomic models, living conditions surveys.
- Later years also development of register-based statistics, cross cutting issues like communication, quality and NSS coordination.
- From 2013/2014 onwards an increased focus on support via Norad’s “For Development programmes”.
- Also support to sector/thematic areas with international organisations, developing global guidelines, standards and methods.
- The whole institution contributes. Since 2019 more than 140 persons in SSB have been involved.

### Challenges identified by SSB
- Underfunding of National Statistical Systems (NSS).
- National Statistical Offices (NSOs) struggle with independently deciding their work plans/priorities.
- Overreliance on global survey programmes.
- Lack of access to – and use - of administrative sources (legal/technical/institutional).
- Actual use of NSS developed data/statistics, both nationally and internationally.
- Donor practice gap:
  - In an ideal world – the donors work with the NSO and the National Strategy for Development of Statistics (NSDS) and find a match between competencies and the NSO/NSDS needs.
  - In practice, however, international donors often support their own specific thematic areas – not necessarily the broad based national statistical priorities.
  - SSB acknowledges that in some instances it gives support to isolated statistical areas that do not necessarily take a national holistic view.

### Registers for development
- Administrative registers - an under-used source in the statistical world – most countries have registers that are not used for statistics.
- Develop/strengthen core registers that can be used for official statistics.
- Partnership with the Tax Administration, The Mapping Authority, The Coordinating Register for Legal Entities & SSB.
- Challenging to transfer the “Nordic model” to other statistical systems – long history - but can some steps be skipped?

### Digital public goods – cooperation with Nordic colleagues
- The Nordic NSOs share many of the same strengths and have jointly developed working methods and generic IT-solutions, on business registers, national accounts and dissemination - used in many of our partner countries.
- Examples of tools:
  - Nadabas – a tool for compiling National Accounts
  - Statbus – a generic business register solution
  - PX-Web – a simple way to disseminate the statistics

### Going forward – how can SSB best contribute?
- By being an accountable partner with a broad and long-term horizon. The aim is to build capacity, not gap filling.
- By putting national priorities first. Our support should be well aligned with national priorities, ensuring national use of data and long-term (national) financing.
- To help facilitate discussions on data sharing and data integration among different government agencies with official registers and support to improve the quality of existing registers for development of statistics.
- Be well-coordinated with other donor support – to avoid overlap and to maximise the effect of the total support.

### How can donors best contribute?
- Advocate for increased national financing to NSS.
- Become champions of statistics
  - Nationally (for gov etc and donors)
  - Internationally (funding will still be needed)
- Establish national pooled funds for statistics – finance the NSDS/ national stats programme.
- Use national data and national official statistics, also for M&E monitoring when possible, and align indicators in own plan with national indicators.

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_Source: https://www.imf.org/-/media/files/capacity-developement/d4d/june-2023/05-statistics-norway.pdf_