The World Bank has joined with its development partners in a commitment to achieve measurable improvements in sustainable growth and poverty reduction. The new emphasis on monitoring development outcomes, exemplified by the Millennium Development Goals and country-owned Poverty Reduction Strategy, has focused attention on the quality of statistics and the need to improve the capacity of national and international statistical systems to provide a wide range of timely and reliable indicators.

The World Bank, Development Committee noted the need for increased and coordinated donor support for capacity building, including that for results-oriented monitoring and evaluation and statistics.

The objectives of this course are three-fold:

• To provide an assessment of some of the serious weaknesses and challenges facing national and global statistical systems
• To bring together information on key statistical activities currently
• To identify what more World Bank and its partners can do to improve the quality and availability of development statistics.

Promoting standards and frameworks

• Strengthening international data systems
• Compiling transnational data.
• The highest priority for action is assigned to increasing statistical capacity at the national level,
• The recommendations for increasing the demand for, as well as the supply of, good statistics at national level.

Evidence of weak statistical systems

• Strengthening international data systems
• Compiling transnational data
• Strategic planning
• Making better use of existing data
• Training and new tools for data collection and analysis
• Financing for statistics
• New instruments for financing statistics
• Working with the international community