| Project Detail |
Project Development Objective
PDO Statement
25. To improve the quality of welfare data collection and accessibility to comparable welfare data in
the Pacific Island Countries
PDO Level Indicators
(a) Number of PSMB-commissioned guidance notes approved and disseminated
(b) Number of experiment reports produced and submitted to PSMB
(c) Number of regionally comparable indicators published on SPC platforms
(d) Number of harmonized micro-datasets published on SPC platforms
B. Project Components
26. The SPC project will provide US$4.4 million equivalent in grant financing to SPC-SDD across three
components: (1) Support to the PSMB (US$1.13 million equivalent), (2) Institutional Strengthening and
Implementation Support (US$1.70 million equivalent), and (3) Alternative Data Collection Methods
(US$1.57 million equivalent). The components and detailed activities are elaborated in the following
paragraphs, with the links between these three components illustrated in figure 4.
The key feature of the SPC project is two long-term consultant positions that will be hired to
execute the majority of the work across the three components. The two positions are a Welfare
Economist and a Statistics Advisor. The two consultants will be financed proportionally from each project
component. In addition to the two long-term consultants, a medium-term consultant, a Harmonization
Advisor, will be hired under Component 2 to initiate microdata harmonization processes to facilitate the
production of comparable welfare statistics.
28. The core responsibilities of the Welfare Economist will include supporting analysis for and
dissemination of national poverty statistics as well as producing regionally comparable statistics. This goal would be further supported by technical workshops to increase capacity in NSOs and consequently
the quality of data and statistics they produce. The technical advice and analysis, for up to nine PICs, may
include sample design and poverty estimation, among others. These rarely required but technically
demanding skills are more efficiently supported centrally rather than through thinly resourced NSOs for
whom it would not be cost-effective to invest in their development. In the past, there have been issues
with poverty estimation, such as the creation of inconsistent consumption aggregates, due to varying
technical recommendations and the uncoupled processes for the data cleaning and analysis. By joining
these activities under a harmonized set of regional guidelines, it would be possible to increase efficiency
and quality in the production cycle of national and regional statistics. To support this kind of integrative
work, the Welfare Economist will conduct workshops on topics such as poverty assessments, outliers,
nonstandard units conversions, and time use. The desired outcome is an increase in the institutional
capacity of SPC-SDD and the technical capacity of country NSOs.
29. The Statistics Advisor will act as the Chief Advisor on survey methodology for the region and as
the main source of technical advice to country-level Resident Advisors. The selected candidate will bring
extensive knowledge of the survey methods literature, which will be used to inform both the activities of
the PSMB (Component 1) and the innovation experiments (Component 3). The focus of this consultant’s
work will be on the development, documentation, and dissemination of context-specific best practices as
well as skills transfer to current SPC-SDD and regional NSO staff. In addition, the Statistics Advisor will
serve as the focal point for operationalizing the PSMB regional guidelines and will be the first point of
contact for the Resident Advisors embedded in the NSO under the country-level projects within this SOP
(the phase 1 of which includes Tonga and Kiribati). Linking the country-level Resident Advisors to a single
centralized source of advice will eliminate the heterogeneity in technical assistance that has historically
hindered comparability and promoted regional harmonization.
Component 1: Support to the Pacific Statistics Methods Board (US$1.13 million equivalent)
30. Supporting the running of the PSMB will significantly accelerate the identification and adoption
of improved methods by NSOs in the PICs. The PSMB is seen to be a vital component in the new regional
statistics governance framework recommended by the 2017 HOPS meeting. The PSMB is tasked with
undertaking literature reviews and field experiments to test the viability of new statistical methods in the
Pacific context as well as making recommendations to NSOs based on the results. This approach has
benefits to the region on several levels: (a) it introduces a culture of academic rigor in the process of
statistical innovations while remaining mindful of the local context and the need for local credibility, (b) it
promotes harmonization in the Pacific region by replacing bilateral recommendations from development
partners—which can sometimes clash with one another—with a more streamlined process, and (c) it
shifts the burden of investment in experimentation from resource-constrained NSOs to a regional body
with higher capacity, which also introduces economies of scale.
31. The project supports SPC-SDD to provide secretariat functions to the PSMB due to its role as the
main regional development partner. SPC-SDD’s role in the PSMB was decided in the 2017 HOPS meeting,
as described in paragraph 14. However, SPC is also the regional development partner that is best placed
to liaise with all members of the board and organize annual meetings in the Pacific This project will finance SPC-SDD to provide a secretariat function for the PSMB. Under this
subcomponent, the project will finance the secretariat functions, including (a) organizing PSMB meetings
that take place twice a year (either live or by videoconference), (b) setting the meeting agenda and inviting
appropriate international experts as needed, (c) coordinating the papers and reports on Pacific data
collection to be reviewed at the PSMB meeting, (d) identifying priority topics for further review at
subsequent PSMB meetings, and (e) summarizing the meeting discussion into formal minutes and
recommendations to be circulated to regional NSOs. A meeting will require a quorum of three of the four
regional NSO representatives (Micronesia, Melanesia, Polynesia, and the small island states) and two of
the three technical partners (Australia Bureau of Statistics, Statistics New Zealand, and the UN system).
This subcomponent does not, however, finance the logistics costs (venue and travel for participants) of
the methods board meetings themselves.
33. The Statistics Advisor will play a key role in providing technical expertise to the PSMB. As part
of the PSMB’s function to promote academic rigor in its recommendations for standardizing data
collection methods, it may commission additional research to understand and tailor recommendations to
the Pacific context. The terms of reference for the Statistics Advisor will require knowledge of both current
international best practices in the collection of official statistics as well as contact within the wider survey
methodology academic community. The Statistics Advisor will deploy these skills to either perform
requested research on priorities for further review, including conducting literature reviews and compiling
information on regional norms, or identifying the appropriate experts in the field to provide
recommendations. The project will finance SPC-SDD to contract external expertise to produce these
recommendations.
Subcomponent 1.2: Dissemination and Training
34. The project will support SPC-SDD to lead the dissemination of best practice recommendations
from the PSMB to regional NSOs. The project will support dissemination and training for PSMB
recommendations in IDA-eligible countries, with a strong emphasis on implementation as opposed to
theory. The activities under this subcomponent will take two forms: large-scale regional trainings and
country-level and small group workshops.
35. Regional trainings will focus on issues common to all countries. Large regional trainings will bring
together technical personnel from NSOs across the Pacific region, with project financing limited to IDAeligible countries on topics that are of universal interest. An early request is for SPC-SDD to arrange a
regional training on the forthcoming PSMB recommendations on monetary poverty measurement related
to SDG 1.1.1 and 1.2.1. These trainings will include both theory and practical applications but are not
centered on producing country-specific outputs. Since regional trainings are costly, in terms of both
financial cost and time of technical staff away from their NSO, these are envisioned to be rare, occurring
only 2–3 times during the lifetime of the project.
36. Workshops will be conducted at the level of the country or in small groups of neighboring
countries. The focus of these workshops will be on applying PSMB recommendations to specific issues
that are timely to where the countries are in the survey process. For example, during the planning stage,
countries may construct a sample design or receive training in programming advanced checks into the
CAPI program. In both cases, the participants would leave the workshop with a concrete output, a sample
design and a CAPI program, respectively. Other proposed topics include anonymization, addressing outliers in the data, and converting nonstandard units. In all cases, economies of scale will be sought to
conduct joint trainings, subject to countries being in similar places in terms of both the survey calendar
and technical expertise.
37. This subcomponent also includes the work to improve the analysis and publication of statistics
in the region. Beyond the skill transfer from the consultants to permanent SPC-SDD staff, the expanded
human resources will be utilized for training workshops, dissemination activities, and technical advice to
improve the way statistics are reported and consumed among client countries of SPC. It is anticipated that
this deeper engagement with NSOs in relation to analysis and reporting, beyond data collection, will have
lasting impacts on SPC-SDD’s evolving mode of operation in the region, building its role as a regional
knowledge leader and coordinator, as well as for the production of comparable and better quality
statistics.
Component 2: Institutional Strengthening and Implementation Support (US$1.70 million equivalent)
38. The second component of activities will support SPC-SDD in its transition to a regional
knowledge producer and a leader in the dissemination of data. To fulfill its mission of strengthening
access to and use of development statistics in policy development, SPC-SDD would benefit from expanded
analytical capacity, provided through the recruitment of the two long-term consultants. In addition, this
component includes funding for existing SPC staff to support the technical and administrative
implementation of the project as well as funding to strengthen SPC-SDD’s ability to provide remote
training to NSOs and other office-related costs essential to the administration of the project.
Subcomponent 2.1: Expanding Technical Capacity of SPC-SDD
39. This subcomponent supports strengthening technical capacities of SPC-SDD in providing support
to the PICs on welfare data collection, analysis and dissemination, including (a) providing technical
assistance and training on the implementation of the methodological recommendations generated by the
PSMB; (b) harmonizing key welfare indicators produced from HIES, with respect to both historical and
future datasets, including developing guidelines to standardize processes for harmonization and
anonymization of such data; and (c) developing and updating a roster of consultants and academics to
provide technical assistance to NSOs of the PICs .
40. This subcomponent will build SPC-SDD’s technical capacity to support PICs on welfare data
collection, analysis, and dissemination. This capacity building will be provided through a Welfare
Economist, who will (a) provide direct support to build country capacity on data collection and analysis,
which includes the implementation of PSMB-recommended methodological innovations and the
production of comparable statistics for key indicators and (b) provide training and day-to-day mentoring
to SPC-SDD staff in these methods. In addition, a Harmonization Advisor will be hired to create comparable
indicators and micro-datasets to promote data use in the region. Additionally, the Welfare Economist’s
job description includes developing a network of academics and consultants in the region with the
relevant experience and skills to provide ad hoc and short-term technical assistance to NSOs in the Pacific.
Maintaining an updated roster of consultants will speed up the recruitment process in response to urgent
requests for support from NSOs in the Pacific. |
