International Technical Support Newsletter no. 15, January 2021

How can we best adapt our activities to enable them to continue under the best conditions and in the most relevant way possible given the current health crisis? This question has been put to international technical assistance, as well as to the rest of INSEE and the world of official statistics since the beginning of 2020. INSEE’s international technical assistance, which, under normal circumstances, is heavily reliant on the organisation of technical assistance missions abroad and on hosting visiting foreign delegations, has been heavily impacted by the crisis. Since March 2020, international travel has been fully suspended until further notice. Our work programme has been completely overhauled in order to adapt to this new situation. We have succeeded in completing numerous remote actions in a range of different fields and with highly diverse audiences. Steps have been implemented with a view to measuring their effectiveness and, in light of the results, we may decide to continue with them, virtually or on site where possible. It is still too early to draw conclusions, but we have already been able to outline the pathways for the future implementation of statistical cooperation: a hybrid approach that combines the best of remote working – which the crisis has helped us to discover – with the undeniable benefits of face-to-face working, particularly when it comes to maintaining close links with our partners.

This issue begins with an interview of the Director General of INSEE conducted by Expertise France, the French international technical cooperation agency, to mark World Statistics Day. In this interview, Jean-Luc Tavernier discusses INSEE’s active commitment to international technical assistance and stresses the importance of robust statistical infrastructures for all countries. This is followed by a dossier highlighting how technical assistance is adapting and developing in the face of the health crisis, through the continuation of previously planned activities that are adapting to the new logistical constraints, as well as the appearance of new activities that aim to help NSIs in developing countries to respond to the crisis. It is a case of helping our partners to ensure the continuity of their statistical production activities, while also measuring the economic and social consequences of the health crisis. Webinars, videoconferences, distance training and remote discussions, we have included several articles that look at some of the activities that took place in these formats during the second half of 2020. Two interviews with experts who have been involved in such activities serve to enrich this overview. The interview with Morocco’s High Commission for Planning casts light on the experiences of one of our partners in the face of this crisis.

This newsletter continues with two announcements, one concerning the publication of the 114th issue of the Statéco journal, and the other concerning the financial and methodological support provided by INSEE for surveys conducted by students in African statistics schools as part of their education.

It closes with a list of INSEE’s cooperation activities during the second half of 2020, together with a summary of our activities throughout the year.

We hope you find this an enjoyable read.

For example, we jointly organise a seminar every year with Afristat for statisticians from French-speaking African countries. I was a speaker at this seminar via video conference in 2019 on the theme of the governance of national statistical systems. Finally, historically, at INSEE – and now GENES, or the Groupe des Écoles Nationales d'Économie et Statistique – we have developed substantial support for training statisticians. This is the case with the support to the African schools of statistics in Abidjan (Côte d’Ivoire), Cotonou (Benin), Dakar (Senegal) and Yaoundé (Cameroon). We contribute to training programmes, but also by hosting students, awarding scholarships…

In what context do these cooperation activities take place?
These technical assistance activities can take place under bilateral cooperation projects, including European institutional twinning operations, but also increasingly under regional cooperation projects implemented in consortiums. For example, we work with Expertise France under the Pan African Statistics Programme, an ambitious programme funded by the European Union that aims to improve the production and dissemination of quality statistics in Africa and is helping set up STATAFRIC, the pan-African institute for statistics. We also work together in European Union Eastern neighbourhood countries, where we mobilise our experts under the STEP programme, after taking part in the MEDSTAT IV project, which targeted Southern neighbourhood countries.

Why is it interesting for INSEE statisticians to take part in this international cooperation activity?
INSEE’s international technical assistance activity contributes to France’s development assistance policy and therefore fulfils an international solidarity objective. It is also a matter of the international visibility of INSEE and France.

For the experts, taking part in a technical cooperation mission is very instructive and professionally very rewarding. It improves their teaching skills, but also allows them to discover other professional practices and consider, in a mirrored way, their own practices. Despite our rather limited budgetary framework, I would stress that it develops the human capital of our staff and develops their expertise.

And, especially, it builds ties with other national statistical institutes, in Europe as well as in the rest of the world, and allows good practices to be shared. Furthermore, judging by the number of requests, this support is appreciated by our partners, particularly in certain focus areas for INSEE, such as national accounts, but also on issues concerning the governance of national statistical institutes or methodology (sampling, seasonal adjustment, data anonymisation…), which are important for ensuring the quality of the statistical data produced.

The COVID-19 crisis has shaken the world of cooperation. What are the prospects for statistical cooperation in this context?
Our work programme for 2020 has been seriously disrupted by the COVID-19 crisis, but we have done our utmost to continue our activities remotely. This first involved supporting initiatives launched by national statistical institutes (NSIs) in developing and transition countries to ensure the continuity of their statistical production during the crisis and monitor the economic and social impact of this crisis. For example, INSEE is jointly organising webinars in French with Paris21 and Afristat, in partnership with the Economic Commission for Africa, on subjects related to the adaptation of NSIs to the COVID-19 crisis.

For INSEE, it has also involved continuing to take part in European projects managed by Expertise France, in the form of remote support. For example, under the STEP programme, the training on micro data led by INSEE this summer took place online. Similarly, we participated remotely in a workshop on statistical coordination in early July 2020. Our bilateral cooperation programmes have continued by adapting the organisational arrangements.

This crisis in some way provides the opportunity to rethink our cooperation methods. We are moving towards the development of a sort of “tele-cooperation” that reaches more people, including non-French-speaking audiences

This interview was conducted by Expertise France and published online on 20/10/2020, the original can be found at this Ouvrir dans un nouvel ongletlink.

With a view to ensuring that it can pursue its mission effectively, international technical assistance is learning to make relevant use of different means of remote working. Although these resources had previously been used to complement more traditional activities, the scale at which they have been mobilised has led INSEE to substantially alter its working methods in this area. To ensure that it would be able to cope with the diversity of the activities, while also agreeing upon the progress of the projects, several different means of cooperation have been put to use: webinars, workshops, bilateral training and discussions conducted online, together with technical assistance and expert discussions.

Indeed, while the webinars are intended to broadly highlight some general problems shared by various countries, the purpose of the online discussions and workshops is to work together with interested partners to develop a more in-depth shared vision of possibilities, objectives and work to be carried out. At the same time, training, which has also been adapted to be conducted remotely, enable the acquisition of the skills required in order to implement the changes to be imparted. Finally, technical assistance and expert discussions have continued remotely in order to provide support for solving problems that have already been clearly defined.

The following dossier illustrates these different means of action through a selection of activities undertaken during the second half of 2020. Some of these actions have been launched specifically in response to a problem generated by the COVID-19 crisis. Others are a continuation of previously planned activities.

During the second half of 2020, INSEE, AFRISTAT and PARIS21 joined forces with the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) to develop a series of webinars on topical issues. While bringing in the experience of INSEE and other NSIs from developed countries, the primary aim of this initiative was to promote the sharing of experience between NSIs in sub-Saharan and Maghreb countries with regard to the adjustments made to the production and dissemination of statistics in the context of the health crisis. Conferences, organised in French, brought together a group of professionals from various fields, including statisticians, demographers, researchers and decision-makers. Each conference was attended by around 100 participants and a total of more than 300 unique internet users attended at least one of the five webinars held since the end of June. Each topic was addressed in one of two formats: two 1.5-hour webinars on consecutive days or a single 2-hour session.

They looked at the following topics:

Together with other NSIs from OECD countries, and in particular Statistics Canada, INSEE has played an active role in each of these conferences. This has allowed INSEE to present some of its work, particularly the adaptations that have been made in order to produce death statistics in shorter time periods since the start of the pandemic, adaptations to collection instruments (price data collection, telephone surveys, etc.) and its communication strategy (website dedicated to the consequences of the COVID-19 health crisis on the insee.fr website, production of articles to liven up the INSEE blog, social networks, etc.).

INSEE’s experts also took part in other initiatives, such as the webinars on calculating the price index in the context of the health crisis and on quarterly accounts within the scope of the PAS programme (Pan African Statistics Programme, a programme to support African integration through the production of quality statistics that are available to assist with decision-making).

The National Statistical Institutes of Sub-Saharan Africa and the Maghreb countries also found themselves on the front line in the face of this unprecedented crisis and in the increased demand for appropriate data to provide information to decision-makers to assist them in the management of the crisis. The sharing of experience during the webinars made it possible to highlight some of the work that has been carried out and to assist one another in overcoming these new challenges. It also made the participants more aware of the fact that this crisis offers opportunities to make organisational changes and to introduce innovative statistical production methods.

In April and May 2020, during the first lockdown, several actions were carried out with Morocco’s High Commission for Planning (HCP) with a view to helping them to continue producing statistics against the backdrop of the health crisis, as well as to report on its economic and social consequences. Several workshops focused on the establishment by the HCP of a household telephone survey on the socio-economic impact of COVID-19: organisational arrangements, sampling and survey methodology. Two other videoconferences concerned the establishment of the consumer price index during the pandemic and sampling within HCP’s Employment survey. This virtual cooperation has been a success, in spite of the technical nature of the topics discussed. In particular, they allowed for the participation of many HCP staff, which would have been more difficult in person.

The following two testimonials provide an overview of the perspectives of the various parties involved in this work.

ERETES can be seen as the cutting edge of INSEE’s statistical cooperation. This tool, which is co-managed by INSEE and Eurostat, is today used by around thirty countries around the world to draw up their annual national accounts. Cape Verde is one of its latest users. Since 2018, INSEE has been working in collaboration with AFRITAC (IMF) to assist them in the benchmark revision of their national accounts in compliance with the 2008 SNA. In 2020, this assistance had to be provided purely remotely.

Under normal circumstances, these assistance missions take the form of a one-week in-person visit. This format presents the advantage of being able to alternate between various complementary activities. Plenary meetings take stock of the general progress of works and ensure that everyone is duly involved. Workshops to build upon the training are dedicated to the practical implementation of specific functions offered by the tool. Finally, working sessions conducted with each accountant allow them to focus specifically on their own tasks. The switch to doing this fully remotely proved challenging, but also presented opportunities.

On the one hand, the entirety of the source preparation phase before the preparation of the accounts involves the manipulation of numerous working files, databases and repositories, which does not make it conducive to remote work. For example, the lack of direct access to working files has proven to be a particular disadvantage when dealing with certain issues. In addition, responding in parallel to requests that overlapped in all subject areas brought about higher “entry costs” for both parties than would have been incurred during a mission in which each subject is dealt with in depth in a sequential manner.

On the other hand, communicating by email has led to questions and answers being formulated more precisely than in verbal communications, as it is possible to take time to think and to search for detailed documentation. The fact that experts were able to spread their interventions out over time and reconcile them with other tasks made it possible to increase support overall. This form of communication also presented the advantage of better documenting the methodological discussions and the decisions taken.

Between September and November, Anna Smyk, a seasonal adjustment expert at INSEE, worked alongside the Vietnamese NSI with a view to helping it to improve the working-day adjustment of its quarterly GDP. More specifically, the request concerned the inclusion of non-fixed holidays (lunar calendar) when making a working-day adjustment in JDemetra+.

According to Anna Smyk, “this way of working is effective when the issue revolves around a specific point and the concepts and tools are otherwise well known, as was the case here”. However, “it is not suitable in cases where prior knowledge is poor of where the issue is too broad, for example the complete overhaul of a seasonal adjustment process”. In that case, a more complete project would need to be set up.

In November, a meeting took place between INSEE’s metadata experts and Serbia’s NSI (SORS). The French experts gave a presentation on INSEE’s Statistical Metadata Repository (RMéS) and the Serbian experts presented their approach to managing metadata in return. SORS is currently in the process of developing a general metadata system that is connected to its existing systems – an ambitious project. This sharing of experience provided an insight into each other’s approaches and explored the relevance of further collaboration to assist SORS with its future developments.

In December, a meeting was arranged between Serbia’s NSI and the Directorate of Research, Economic Studies and Statistics (DARES). The aim was to present the method used by France to produce these statistics, thanks to the Labour Force Activity and Employment Conditions (ACEMO) survey, and to hold discussions concerning the Serbian project, which aims to establish a methodology for the production of statistics regarding vacant jobs through the use of administrative data. It is essential that the interactive nature of these activities is preserved, because their added-value is largely based on discussions between the participants. The persons running these events are getting fully aware of how essential is the role of facilitator they have to play in order to preserve the richness of interactions that appear less spontaneous than during face-to-face meetings.

This edition forms part of the African Sustainable Development Goals Monitoring (SODDA) programme, funded by the Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs and managed by Expertise France with the scientific and technical support of INSEE.

It is available on INSEE’s website at the following address.

INSEE has entered into a commitment with African schools of statistics (ESA). Support for statistical training is traditionally one of the two pillars of French statistical cooperation with sub-Saharan Africa (the second being the partnership with AFRISTAT). INSEE’s executive training schools therefore maintain a close partnership with the ESAs within the framework of the Conference of African Statistics School Directors (CODESA). INSEE also maintains direct cooperation relationships with the ESAs. In this context, INSEE wanted to strengthen its cooperative relationships with these schools and to provide them with scientific, technical and financial support. Each year, the ESAs organise a pedagogical survey that gives students the opportunity to put what they have learnt into practice by conducting a statistical study, from the design of the questionnaire and the choice of population surveyed to the collection of information, which is also carried out by the students, and the exploitation of the results.

This year, the topics chosen were directly linked to the COVID-19 crisis. The survey conducted by ENSAE (Dakar) therefore concerns “COVID-19: impacts and coping strategies of the academic system in the Dakar region”. The work in progress was presented by ENSAE during its participation in the fifth webinar organised within the scope of the partnership between INSEE, AFRISTAT, PARIS21 and UNECA. The survey conducted by ENSEA (Abidjan) is entitled “preventive behaviour, perception of the effectiveness of control measures and changes brought about by the COVID-19 crisis: an analysis of the situation of RESA students and companies belonging to the Côte d’Ivoire SME Agency”. Finally, the survey set up by ISSEA (Yaoundé) looks at: “Employment and empowerment of urban women in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic: situation of women in the city of Yaoundé”.

Discussions are organised between INSEE’s experts and the members of the pedagogical teams of the three schools throughout the survey process in order to validate the methodological choices and to discuss any questions that arise as the survey is carried out. The support will continue until the results are published.