Evidence Based Policy Making A presentation prepared for

1
Evidence Based Policy MakingA presentation
prepared for  High Level Inception Seminar on
National Strategy for the Development of
Statistics (NSDS)

• Baikuntha Aryal
• Economic Policy Analysis Division
• Ministry of Finance

2
Presentation Outline

• Brief Introduction
• Use of statistics in policy making
• Demand and supply of statistics
• Role of Institutions
• National System for Statistics
• Conclusion

3
What is?

• Evidence based policy making
• relatively a new approach
• an approach for well informed decisions about
  policies, programs and projects
• has capabilities to defend the policy decisions,
  with a set of evidence
• has capabilities for in-depth analysis, with
  information about the problem and impacts
• a process that helps planners make better
  informed decisions by putting the best available
  evidence at the centre of the policy process
  (MDG)
• can be a basis for result based management

4
Different than normal policy making?

• Evidence Based Policy Making has better ability
  to
• achieve recognition of a policy issue bases on
  the information and provides room for lobbying
  and advocacy
• inform the design and choice of policy capacity
  for making proper recommendations
• forecast the future understanding the issue and
  analyzing the impact
• monitor policy implementation measurable
  indicators for monitoring
• evaluate policy impact data and information
  makes the policy impact smooth and simpler

5
What are needed?

• Evidence based policy making demands
• reliable and accessible statistics
• understanding of statistics
• statistical analysis
• theoretical (with the use of statistical tools)
• practical (sometimes mere theoretical analysis
  may not be understandable to everyone)
• proper use of statistics
• availability of follow up statistics
• However, the evidence is not statistics alone

6
What contributes for evidence base?

• Evidence bases are
• Descriptive expert opinion, literatures
• Experimental random trials, quasi experiments
• Existing and established theories confirmed
  theories, reviews
• Qualitative qualitative researches,
  observations
• Quantitative statistics, modeling

7
Why statistics?

• Statistics give the strong base of evidence for
  policy (some examples)
• Poverty reduction 23.8 percent population lives
  below poverty line, but where? Segregated data on
  quintiles or deciles base?
• Social security how effective? Are the real
  beneficiaries getting it?
• Education for all demographic information up to
  village/ward level, infrastructure and human
  resources information
• Health insurance infrastructure, health
  personnel, demographic information
• Food security price effect, supply constraint,
  international trade

8
Why statistics? contd

• Statistics give the strong base of evidence for
  planning
• Base line information where we stand now?
• Inter sectoral linkages how other sector
  contributes in developing other sector?
• Complementarity what further needs, e.g. human
  resource planning?
• Structure of economy what to prioritize?
• Past information - bases for moving forward
  what went wrong? What can be corrective measures?

9
Why statistics? contd

• Statistics in economic policy
• Real sector
• Growth, Investment, Consumption, Inflation
• Government sector
• Fiscal policy, Government expenditure and sources
• Monetary sector
• Monetary flow, interest rates, exchange rates
• External sector
• International trade, balance of payments

10
Why statistics? contd

• Statistics in every phase of policy process
• Policy identification need, coverage, possible
  outputs
• Policy analysis pros and cons of policy,
  possible impact
• Policy implementation how is it performing? Any
  need of change
• Policy monitoring indicators to monitor
• Policy evaluation comparison of target and
  achievement, impact analysis, replicability

11
Statistics vs Data

• Statistics is study of the collection,
  organization, analysis, interpretation and
  presentation of data
• Data
• Cross sectional taken at a point of time for
  different sample units, used for policy
  intervention, e.g. poverty data
• Time series taken at different time period for
  the same unit, used for historical analysis, e.g.
  GDP data
• Panel cross sectional time series taken for the
  same sample units, used for analyzing impact of
  policy intervention, e.g. NLSS data

12
Official statistics

• Statistics can be obtained from different sources
  but the official statistics have
• Better reliability
• Wider coverage
• Less bias
• Authenticity
• Methodological transparency and clarity

13
Demand and supply of statistics

• The policies hardly make use of statistics,
  therefore, low demand reasons being
• Lower analytical capacity and insufficient tools
• Lower understanding of statistics on policy
  making
• Unavailability of disaggregated data
• Lack of appropriate database, giving limited room
  for desired data
• Lack of sufficient knowledge on how the desired
  data set to obtain from the larger database

14
Demand and supply of statistics (.contd)

• The supply of data depends on the data producing
  agencies, therefore, in many occasions supply is
  constrained, because of
• Undeveloped infrastructure for database
• Ownership confusion
• Lack of appropriate data designing
• Insufficient data processing and data storage
  capacity
• Unavailability of data on regular interval
• Because of insufficient supply of data, the
  aggregated statistics cannot be prepared for
  overall analysis, which affects the policy making
  process in a whole

15
Role for official statistics

• Each government agency has to be made responsible
  for statistics, because of
• better access to data
• better understanding of nature and scope of data
  
• being regulator of all the activities under it,
  in most cases
• Therefore,
• Each government agency should prepare and supply
  the data to CBS and other agencies, as needed

16
Role for official statistics

• All government agencies produce data and
  statistics. But, CBS is made more responsible for
  this
• CBS depends on the data produced by other
  agencies, e.g. agriculture data by MOAD, trade
  data by MOCS
• Census and surveys carried out by CBS
• CBS processes the data from other agencies and
  surveys as well as census
• In a way, CBS prepares statistics based on the
  data provided by other agencies

17
National Statistical Systems

• The aim of National Statistical System is to
• serve the Government, the economy and the public
  with data about the economic, demographic, social
  and environmental situation
• and is
• expected to provide an objective perspective
• to enable public scrutiny of government actions
  and accountability to the public, and
• to open a window on the work and performance of
  government itself

18
Take Home Message

• Statistics play crucial role in evidence based
  policy making
• Extensive use of statistics is necessary for
  policy analysis
• The demand and supply of statistics should match
• Inter agency coordination is a must
• Capacity for statistical analysis needs to
  strengthen
• The reliability and authenticity is a matter of
  concern

19

• Thank You !