THE Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) is mulling over possible public-private partnerships (PPPs) to help the government monitor and produce data for over 300 indicators that may be included in the post-2015 agenda or Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
National statistician Lisa Grace S. Bersales said that while world leaders are set on the 17 SDGs, the details of how these goals will be measured, initially pegged at 300 indicators, have not been finalized.
Bersales said that admittedly, statistical systems worldwide cannot produce data for these indicators on their own. She said this can be done through partnerships with private institutions, including academe.
“Ang message namin is hindi namin kaya ng official statisticians ilabas lahat say 300-plus indicators. But, as far as I know, committed na tayo and other countries na magkaroon ng 17 SDGs, talagang sure na ’yun. But as to the details, ilang indicators per goal, ’yan pa ay malalaman next year,” Bersales said.
Bersales said, however, that these PPPs with private institutions and other stakeholders must still adhere to the standards set by statistical agencies. She said this is the goal of the workshop on data revolution that will be conducted in September. This workshop will find ways to make big data acceptable as official statistics.
Big data, Bersales earlier said, does not only mean those on social-media sites like what is now being used in Africa, but also administrative data from public and private institutions.
“These are the issues that will be discussed in these data revolution workshops because not all of the big data there can be used. But there could be [useful big data] so that’s where we have to make discussions,” Bersales said.
Before big data can be used, she the PSA must set the standards on data sampling which is crucial in computing for index weights needed in statistical computations.
If the sampling design fails, Bersales said data obtained from private and public institutions, as well as social media, could be biased. For example, she said, social-media sites like Twitter or Facebook may not be accessed by the poor. If there is limited access to certain data sources such as the Internet for some sectors of society, the data generated will not reflect a complete picture of the situation of the country with respect to certain indicators such as poverty or education.
“The achievement of these goals is undoubtedly an enormous task that requires good quality statistics and the commitment of all sectors, particularly the national government agencies and the local government units who are the frontline institutions in combating poverty,” Bersales said.
Earlier, Bersales said the PSA can create frameworks that can used by other agencies in opening their data to stakeholders.
She added that there are numerous kinds of data that can be tapped in the government. These include business registration records from the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The PSA, Bersales said, is already in the process of encoding SEC data. The information that can be culled from these records can be turned into new data sets like a profile of businesses in the Philippines could now be generated.
The country’s National Statistician also said that greater access to records like those held by the Commission on Audit (COA) would also be “very informative.”