15th Conference of Commonwealth Statistician in New Delhi (India)

The Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation was proud to organize the 15th Conference of Commonwealth Statisticians in New Delhi during 7-10 February, 2011. The Conference was inaugurated by the Hon’ble Union Minister of Statistics and Programme Implementation, Dr. M.S. Gill. It was attended by more than 500 participants comprising delegates from most of the commonwealth countries, International Organisations, senior officials from Government of India/State Governments, Universities, reputed Institutes, Experts and Academicians. The four days conference deliberated on issues of relevance to commonwealth countries particularly in the field of managing economic, social and environmental issues. It also dealt with the current issue of developing appropriate economic and social indicators measuring bubbles in the economy, the progress of societies and issues of demographic transition. 2. In terms of tangible benefits, the countries that participated in the Conference have immensely benefited from the deliberations in terms of understanding the best practices being followed in these emerging areas and also by way of sharing experience, identifying areas of mutual cooperation and collaboration in the field of capacity development. 3, A special session on census 2011 in India, presented by the office of Registrar General of India was well accepted. A large number of queries indicated interest in the Indian census work amongst commonwealth countries. 4. The member countries during the process of deliberations highlighted many important issues ranging from bridging the gap between theoretical and practicing statisticians, need for exchange of staff between member countries for capacity development, cross border sharing of information and best practices, development of indicators for assessing the progress of statistical system and identifying technology based methodology for development of statistical databases in new emerging areas. 5. Acknowledging that at present there is no permanent platform for taking the agenda of commonwealth statisticians forward, some of the member countries wanted that some linkage of this forum be established with the commonwealth Secretariat or possibly other regional/international organizations so that conference on such important issues could be held more frequently than the current frequency of once in five years. 6. At the end of the conference, a working group of ten countries namely Australia, Belize, Cameroon, Canada, Ghana, Guyana, India, South Africa, Tonga and UK was constituted to guide for continuity of the network of Commonwealth Statistics and for evolving future framework.