A knowledge-sharing webinar on strengthening statistical capacity of Bangladesh, focusing on indicators relating to the SDGs (sustainable development goals) was held virtually on Tuesday.

Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA) in collaboration with Statistics and Informatics Division (SID) and Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) under Ministry of Planning hosted the event.

Challenges such as, production of disaggregated and frequent statistics by age, sex, disability and sub-national level, comparability of data, availability of baseline data, conducting a large number of new surveys, technical support availability for regular monitoring, modern technology, etc. still persist that calls for a more restructuring, the webinar emphasised.

Young-Ah Doh, Country Director, KOICA Bangladesh Office, Mohammad Tajul Islam, Director General, Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, Muhammad Mesbahul Alam, Additional Secretary, Statistics and Informatics Division, among other officials of the government of Bangladesh joined the virtual event.

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Bangladesh’s standing in big data usage has highly advanced, namely, smart national ID Card database, COVID-19 vaccine registration, population census 2011 database, E-Passport integrated with NID database, national household database, 100 million births registered electronically, etc.

A number of ongoing initiatives to incorporate big data in official statistics and SDG data disaggregation is also underway, said KOICA.

KOICA has supported an eight-day long online fellowship programme titled ‘Strengthening the Statistical Capacity of SDGs Indicators and Big Data’ targeting total 20 officials of SID and BBS conducted by Statistics Training Institute in Korea.

The goal was application of Big Data capability required for statistics production and analytics that will assist in shaping Korean know-how techniques with objective to cultivate statistics and indicator production capabilities related to SDG3 (health) and SDG4 (education).

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A detailed presentation on observations, experiences and findings from the training program was highlighted by officials of SDG cell from SID and BBS along with focus on how concepts are formulated for composing a feasible action plan that can be implemented in country context.

Speaking on the occasion, the Director General of Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics appreciated KOICA’s support for holding an online training along with the dissemination of knowledge of first-hand Korean know-how techniques to a larger key audience helpful for Bangladesh.

KOICA’s Country Director hoped that the training provided will be able to enhance the national strategy for development of Statistics of Bangladesh.