As World Bank approves US$40 million to strengthen Ghana Statistical Service and the national statistical system

WASHINGTON, August 25, 2011 The Government of Ghana has acquired a total of US$40 million from the World Bank to provide technical and financial support for implementation of the Ghana Statistics Development Plan (GSDP), with a focus on the improvement of statistical service delivery by the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) and nine Ministries Departments and Agencies (MDAs). The project will be financed from a US$30m IDA Credit and a US$10m Statistics for Results Facility Catalytic Fund (SRF-CF) Grant.

The target beneficiaries of the project are all users and producers of statistics on Ghana. These include: i) the Ghana Statistical Service; ii) relevant MDAs; iii) policy makers and planners; iv) Parliament; v) civil society organizations; vi) the private sector; and vii) the international community including development partners; and ultimately viii) the general public.

The projects overall objective is to strengthen the National Statistical System (NSS) in the production and dissemination of timely and robust statistics relevant for evidence-based policy-making and other uses. This will be measured by the following indicators: i) User satisfaction with statistical products and services of the NSS; ii) Statistical capacity score of Ghana (using the World Bank Statistical Capacity Indicator scores) ; iii) Proportion of censuses and surveys implemented by NSS as per the long term census and survey plan; and iv) Time between end of data collection and release of main report for household surveys.

Component 1: Institutional Reform and Organizational Change (US$9.36 million) Component 1a: Training and re-deployment (US$2.92 million) Component 1b: Staffing (US$6.44 million) A key element of the GSDP is institutional reform of the Ghana Statistical Service, with a view to creating an environment for increased efficiency and effectiveness in the management and coordination of the national statistical system. This component will support the GSS in implementing its strategy for institutional reform, including retraining of staff of the GSS, implementing a career development program for those staff, and supporting appropriate redeployment to other MDAs and MMDAs. After retraining and redeployment options are considered it is possible that there will be a number of staff that the Government is unable to place and these staff will be considered for buy-out. Should this be necessary, this component will assist GSS to carry out a plan for the staff buy-out including measures to mitigate the impact of buy-out through training, counseling and other forms of assistance as may be needed.

Component 2: Enhancing capacity (US$14.96 million) Sub-component 2a  Enhancing capacity of GSS and MDA statistical units (US$5.73 million) Sub-component 2b  Improving Statistical Framework (US$4.18 million) Sub-component 2c  Investing in Physical Infrastructure and Equipment (US$5.05 million) This component will support building the capacity of the GSS at the national and regional level and strengthening the skills of the professional and non-professional staff of the MDA statistical units in data collection, data production, data validation and data analysis. The component will ensure the development of a master sampling framework from the calendar year 2010 population and housing census, including census post-enumeration mapping, cartographic mapping, and development of a business register. The project will also invest in physical infrastructure and equipment of the MDAs statistical units and the GSS headquarters and regional level units, including the provision of information communication and technology (ICT) software and equipment; improving the ICT connectivity for data collection, data transfer and statistical information sharing; improving the management of information systems and enhancements in data collection tools; and providing ICT training to the staff of GSS and MDA statistics units.

Component 3: Data Production and Dissemination (US$11.73 million)) Sub-component 3a: Data Development and Management (US$10.00 million) Sub-component 3b: Communication (US$1.73 million) This component will support the improvement of data collection, compilation, validation, management, analysis and dissemination of data in order to improve the quality, timeliness and use of socio-economic data. It will focus on both enhancing existing statistics and increasing the range of statistics collected and how these are communicated and disseminated to users. Support will be provided to implement the long term census and survey program. This includes modernizing data collection techniques, improving the management of information systems by the MDAs and developing a national statistics databank, through: (a) improving quality control and assurance of the production and dissemination of national statistics; (b) developing a national databank or an information technology data center for official statistics; (c) establishing management information systems in the MDAs and linking them to the national databank; (d) using new technologies in data collections; (e) improving economic statistics including developing and implementing an integrated business enterprise survey; and (f) improving social demographic statistics.

It will support the strengthening of the communications functions of GSS and allied MDAs, by: (a) creating a data dissemination and resource hub within the GSS; (b) modernising and strengthening the GSS public relations and communication units; (c) training of the MDAs communication and public relations units for improved communication and dissemination of statistics; (d) conducting outreach activities to key stakeholders such as media, politicians, policy makers, and academia; (e) developing or upgrading the official national statistics website; (f) developing a release calendar for national statistics; (g) developing a publications and dissemination policy; (h) re-establishing a national advisory committee for users and producers of statistics; (i) developing performance agreements between MDAs and the GSS on the sharing of data and clarification of roles and responsibilities; and (j) establishing a society of official statisticians.

Component 4: Project Management and Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) (US$1.30 million) This component will strengthen and develop the GSSs institutional capacity for project management generally and in particular to ensure the effective management of the project. This will include coordination of participating MDAs, monitoring and evaluation, project procurement and financial management and training of staff in project management and implementation support. This Project was agreed on standard IDA terms of zero percent interest, 40 years payback with 10 years grace period.

Contacts:

In Accra: Kafu Kofi Tsikata (+233) 302 21 41 00, ktsikata@worldbank.org In Washington: Francois Gouahinga (1+) 202 473 06 96, fgouahinga@worldbank.org. For more information, please visit: www.worldbank.org/ghana Visit us on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/worldbankghana Be updated via Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/worldbankafrica For our YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/worldbank