Ms. Ola Awad, President of the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS)

The State of Palestine organizes an international conference on official statistics, to be held on Tuesday 20/10/2015

Ms. Ola Awad, president of the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics , announces that the state of Palestine organizes an international conference on the official statistics ,commemorating under the patronage of His Excellency  Mr. Mahmoud Abbas "Abu Mazen", President of the state Palestine, May Allah swt  grant him protection, and along with the presence of HE Dr. Rami Hamdallah, the Prime Minister on Tuesday 10/20/2015 at the conferences theatre hall  within the Palestinian Red Crescent Society  premises in Al Bireh. Moreover,  the conduction of this conference comes within the scope of the implementation of the decision of the United Nations Statistical Commission (UNSD)  during  its session No. 41 of  February 2010,  which urges  organizing a celebration of "World Statistics Day on October 20 on a regular basis every five years in all member countries> Accordingly,  it was decided at the annual meeting of the Statistical Commission of the United Nations (UNSD) in the month of March 2015, emphasizing  and encouraging national institutions and national statistical agencies to celebrate World Statistics Day on October 20, 2015, to high lightening  the importance of statistics and addressing importance of  official statistics in Palestine

Ms. Awad indicated that 75 delegations representing  international institutions, foreign countries  and regional agencies will participate in this conference including a number of heads of statistical Arab and international bodies,   Arab institutions, international and foreign organizations and international experts in the field of official statistics, research institutions, members of the International Associations for Official Statistics (IAOS).

The President of PCBS indicated  that the convening of this conference comes in conjunction with  that Palestine is chairing the International Association for Official Statistics, and the national need to work on  preparing for the requirements of working  on sustainable development indicators (SDG) to encourage decision and policy-makers  to use official statistics in  decision-making process and in monitoring the impact of economic and social policies on the various aspects of life in Palestine, this conference aims at  increasing  awareness on the importance of an impartial official statistics to monitoring and measuring the achievement of development plans in  various sectors of the State of Palestine. She added that in the light of preparing to implement the Third General Census of Population, Housing and Establishments in 2017 by a national effort  as PCBS would lead the national efforts in this regard.

She noted that the conference will be including a range of activities and events and providing  a range of international worksheets and presentations that will focus on the role of official statistics in the progress of society, These papers would  be on statistical knowledge and the use of modern techniques  to send official statistical letters, official documents against the statistical practices on realty  ,  the behavior of large accumulated data , individual responsibilities versus institutional responsibilities, and to high lightening  the data revolution within the national statistics system and its impact on the official statistics, which are necessary in the current circumstances at the regional and international level, it will also coincided with the    celebration of  launching the Charter of regional practices to official statistics (Regional Code of Practice), and to shed light on the development of indicators beyond the year 2015. Besides, discussing  strategies about dealing with the information revolution, and a focus on innovation and advanced analysis. As well as exploring  the opportunities and challenges of regional cooperation and the role assigned to the International Institute of Statistics and assemblies, also , videos to be displayed about the International Association for Official Statistics (IAOS), activities and conference to be held in the city of Abu Dhabi in 2016, as well as the international conference of the International Statistical Institute in Marrakech in 2017.

Ms. Awad noted that a website was launched for the conference on the official web page of the Palestinian  Central Bureau of Statistics, www.pcbs.gov.ps, covering  all details and issues related to the conference and in particular the agenda of the Conference, and participants and working papers to be presented during the conference and the like.