Mr. Chairman,
Excellencies,
Distinguished Delegates,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Welcome to the 55th Session of the United Nations Statistical Commission. I am pleased to join you in the General Assembly Hall to mark the start of this annual gathering of the global statistical community.
At the outset, I wish to acknowledge the Commission’s historic role and mandate within the United Nations system of developing and advancing global statistical standards and guiding statistical activities. I congratulate you on the 30th anniversary of the Commission adopting the Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics, the professional code for statisticians globally, and the 10th anniversary of their elevation to a General Assembly resolution.
In this increasingly data-driven era, the Commission’s work on statistics and data remains paramount. The international community has seen the recent strengthening of the Commission’s mandate to acknowledge the changing statistical and data ecosystem, the preparations for the 2025 comprehensive review of the Global Indicator Framework for the Sustainable Development Goals and the convening of several UN World Data Fora. These are good examples of the Commission’s outreach and connection to the wider data community. In this context, I look forward to this session’s consideration of a historical resolution to make the Commission more inclusive and representative.
Ladies and gentlemen,
As we passed the halfway mark towards delivering the SDGs, your work has been more central for assessing progress and informing the potential for accelerating action.
In the political declaration of the SDG Summit, Member States acknowledged the importance of data to development efforts. In doing so, they pledged to strengthen international, national, and local data systems. Furthermore, they committed to increasing the availability of SDG data, closing SDG data gaps, increasing financing for data and statistics, and strengthening the data capacities of developing countries.
UN-system partners also rallied behind the power of data, as one of 12 high impact initiatives emerging from the SDG Summit will strengthen political leadership and channel tangible, integrated, and coordinated support behind cross-cutting investment pathways. This initiative adds much needed momentum for building the capacity of national statistical and data systems across the world.
Thanks to your efforts, both within and beyond this Commission, national data and statistical systems have shown much resilience and innovation over recent years, but there are areas where a global approach to action and assistance is needed. I am glad to see this attention to innovation reflected in your agenda and welcome the progress made in areas like big data and data science, open data and subject-matter domains like governance, national accounting, environmental-economic accounting and population and housing census.
Within the UN system we are also focused on modernizing our data and statistical systems. We are committed to the UNdata modernization project, which will deliver a main entry point to authoritative and integrated statistical data from the UN system and other participating international and regional organizations. This is a direct response to the Secretary-General’s “Data Strategy for Action by Everyone, Everywhere” for a data-driven transformation of the United Nations.
Distinguished delegates,
As we look forward to the Summit of the Future in September, this Commission has much to contribute. You will be called upon to provide technical guidance on the topic of Beyond GDP. We will need to identify metrics that capture the important notions of wellbeing, progress, and sustainable development more adequately, and, at the same time, build the capacity of member states to compile and own these metrics.
In closing, let me reaffirm the full support of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs.
Thank you for having traveled from your respective capitals to New York to offer us your knowledge and your expertise.
I wish you fruitful deliberations and a successful session.
Thank you for your attention.