The ADP at the Philippines’ 11th National Convention on Statistics (Manila, 5 October 2010)

As part of the advocacy of the ADP in the Philippines, the ADP Manila team participated in the 11th National Convention on Statistics (NCS), held from 4 to 5 October 2010 at the EDSA Shangri-la Hotel, Mandaluyong City, Philippines and contributed a paper in line with this year’s NCS theme: “Towards a Philippine Statistical System (PSS) Responsive to Emerging National and Global Challenges”. The paper entitled “The Role of Documentation in a Culture of Excellence in Philippine Statistics” was presented by Gaye Parcon (GP) in the ADP-sponsored session. The audience consisted of representatives from government agencies, the private sector, NGOs and the UNICEF. In her presentation, GP established how the ADP contributes to the attainment of the 2005-2010 Philippine Statistical Development Program’s (PSDP) vision of “a PSS with greater capacity to provide excellent service and high quality statistical information...” Specifically, the ADP objectives conform to the PSS’s goal of improved availability and dissemination of statistics thru stronger adoption of the Government Statistics Accessibility Program (GSAP) and the General Standards on Statistical Information Dissemination (GSSID), as well as strict compliance of the standards in the release of official statistics. GP reported the progress of the ADP activities with the 3 major data producing agencies in Philippines, i.e. National Statistics Office (NSO), Bureau of Agricultural Statistics (BAS) and Bureau of Labor and Employment Statistics (BLES), since the Manila office was formed in April 2009. To date, the NSO, BAS and BLES have their own NADAs up and running in their respective websites. GP emphasized that ADP support to the PSS continues, especially with the passage of NSCB Resolution No. 10 Series of 2010 enjoining agencies in the PSS “to archive and document microdata using international standards such as the tools and guidelines developed by the IHSN.”
In the discussion paper prepared by Mr. Gervacio Selda, Director of the Statistical Research and Training Center, four points were stressed: 1. there is a need to expand the coverage of documenting and disseminating important and in-demand survey and administrative data to non-statistical agencies; 2. more microdata should be made readily available in the NADAs, that is, minimize the number of datasets requiring prior clearance, to encourage more users; 3. system-wide policies and guidelines on microdata management, especially on handling confidential information critical to the protection of data providers should be formulated; and 4. a central repository for archived data and agencies that will act as centers for data back-ups should be identified when data archiving shall have been successfully set in place in the statistical system.
During the open forum it was clarified that ADP and DevInfo are complementary because while the former promotes microdata documentation using DDI, the latter is a database system for summary statistics that also uses DDI for metadata.