59th World Statistics Congress
Date: 25-30 August 2013
Venue: Hong Kong - China -

Co-organised by the International Statistical Institute (ISI) and Hong Kong Census and Statistics Department, the 59th World Statistics Congress (WSC) was held on 25-30 August 2013 in Hong Kong-China.

Acting as a networking platform for statistical practitioners through its biennial meetings since 1853, the WSC enables the participants to share experiences, insights and expertise in various statistical fronts. The scientific programme of 2013 encompassed a wide range of topics and features a unique theme on "Youth". A series of sessions was organised on the "Theme Day" of the 59th WSC to address, from various statistical perspectives, topics surrounding the "Youth".

Prof. Savas Alpay, Director General of SESRIC, delivered a presentation in the Special Topic Session (STS052) on "Official Statistics in the Arab region - Challenges and the Way Forward" which was chaired by Dr. Ahmad Hussein, Advisor, Qatar Statistics Authority (QSA). The presentation of Prof. Alpay focused on the statistical capacities of 16 OIC Arab countries with available data and highlighted the challenges faced by them from an indicator perspective in three levels for statistical capacity: (i) Statistical Methodology, (ii) Source Data, and (iii) Periodicity and Timeliness. For each of these levels, the country clusters generated from hierarchical agglomerative clustering (HAC) algorithm based on the statistical capacity scores were also presented by Prof. Alpay. Furthermore, in his presentation, Prof. Alpay summarised the status of National Strategies for the Development of Statistics as a part of country development and poverty reduction policy in these countries. At the end of his presentation, Prof. Alpay gave a set of recommendations including effective technical assistance which are proposed for enhancing the statistical capacity development in the Arab region.

For more information, please visit: http://www.isi2013.hk/en/index.php