The project will hold its second regional meeting on “visibility and the relations with the users of statistics” on February 21-22, 2018 in Lisbon. After the general discussions and conclusions from the 1st regional meeting on this topic on March 22-23, 2017, the participants will now address more specific questions such as:

How to use visualisation tools for communicating on statistics through web-based tools or the social media? The communication from the statistical offices must adapt to the new tools that are used by their different audiences. This calls for revamping the old strategies and for presenting the data under a more attractive and visual way. The workshop will thus discuss infographics and what is required to generate them; participants will also hear and discuss experiences from EU and MED countries.

How to talk with the journalists about statistics? Journalists and the media in general are important vectors for the communication on statistics. However, they are not statisticians and they don’t speak the same language. It is thus important to build bridges with them in order to generate a mutual understanding. The workshop will discuss the results from the Communication for Statistics (C4S) training course implemented by the project. Participating countries will give their perspective on the benefit they drew from the training. Other views will also be brought from the EU countries and Paris21.

How the assessments of the capacities of the statistical systems may contribute to the credibility and trust in official statistics? These assessments are carried out regularly through different systems and using different tools. They all build on concepts and objective criteria that derive from codes of practices for statistics and general principles for the statistical work. What may be different is the process followed to feed these assessments. Different tools will be presented by the project and by guests (Open Data Watch, the World Bank) and experiences from EU and MED countries related to these tools will be discussed.

At the end of the workshop, lessons will be drawn and good practices will be identified that will add up to the set already generated at the end of the 2017 meeting.

The MEDSTAT IV project provides expertise and technical support to promote the harmonisation of statistics in line with EU and international standards in 6 domains: business register and business, trade and balance of payments, energy, labour market, migration and transport. It follows on the previous phase implemented over the period 2010-2013.

Read More

Press Release

MEDSTAT IV