The cardinal duty of an information system is to disseminate appropriate information to the various stakeholders and “users” in the country and local communities. Such information should relate to all the areas selected for monitoring PRSPs and MDGs.
The efficiency of a poverty reduction information system is incumbent on the functional relationships between the statistical data producing and user bodies. In this respect, priority should be given to collaboration and synergy mechanisms with primary data collection and processing sources such as sector-specific ministries, regions and other institutions compiling data on poverty reduction trends in States. Such collaboration should obviously be envisioned to improve coordination as well as the data collection framework and method. In this light, emphasis should be laid on developing and strengthening the poverty reduction data production, processing and dissemination process.
Sound functioning of a poverty reduction information system requires the mobilization of substantial material, human and financial resources. Such resources must be evaluated thoroughly. As a matter of fact, the operation and sustainability of the system will depend on the quality of the human resources utilized and their ability to mobilize, in a timely manner, the requisite financial resources needed to implement the various planned activities. Human resource training emerges as a pillar of the system’s efficiency and sustainability. It will fall specifically under human resource capacity building in all the bodies involved in the implementation of the poverty information and monitoring/evaluation system (line ministries, NIS and other sources) with a view to improving ownership of poverty-related data collection, processing and analysis methods.
The overall objective in the coming years is to boost the efficiency of NSS in
meeting the expectations of users, donors and decision-makers by delivering
reliable and timely statistical data used in monitoring and evaluating poverty
for the purpose of defining reduction strategies. To achieve this objective, the
following specific objectives must be met:
Accordingly, NIS should in the short term prioritize the following:
In the long term, each ministry should set up a statistical service with clearly defined production objectives and human, technical and financial resources to attain such objectives. Technical assistance to sector-specific ministries may be provided by NIS, especially for common directories and nomenclatures.
National authorities should display their political readiness to develop an efficient statistical system by strengthening human resources in all statistical services on the one hand, and on the other hand, by affording adequate material and financial resources to enable them produce statistics on a permanent basis.
Development partners should continue to lend collective financial assistance to comprehensive statistical activities (nationwide surveys such as the general population and housing survey, survey on household living conditions, PHS, MICS, surveys 1-2, etc.), which are the main data sources for calculating vital indicators to monitoring poverty reduction policies.
Annual programme and project implementation tracking should be mainly based on indicators from administrative statistics (input and output indicators).
The production of resource mobilization and use indicators should be an integral part of sector programmes and projects: the means (human, material and financial) needed for the production of such indicators must be included in programme costs.
The development of a medium-term outlook in budget design referred to as Medium-Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) increases the realistic profile of PRSPs.