Dialogue in Pursuit of Development - Are you looking for one of ...

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Develop the capacity to produce and co-ordinate the production and
dissemination of relevant, accurate and timely statistics to meet the needs
of information from the Government, governmental institutions and the
society at large;
Improve the capacity and capability to advise and supervise the production
and dissemination of statistics within other departments, provincial
governments and other organisations or enterprises;
Increase the capability to develop and improve the Lao statistical system
to meet new demands for information.
Organizational set-up
The organisational set-up of the twinning project included the following
functions:
A team leader representing SCB, stationed at NSC;
A Lao counterpart representing the NSC;
A joint committee for the planning and supervision of the project development;
A project coordinator at SCB;
Short-term consultants from SCB;
Study tours for the NSC staff to Statistics Sweden or other national statistical
institutes.
Strategy
The strategy for the twinning co-operationcan be described as in figure 1.
Together the two partners were to climb the steps and eventually reach the
top where NSC emerges as a self-sufficient organisation capable of fulfilling
its role as the national institute. (See figure 1.)
Twinning as a method: the experiences of NSC
The ten years of collaboration with SCB have resulted in tangible improvements
at NSC. We have now a modern IT infrastructure in the office. The
staff has learnt how to use statistical software and to operate IT-networks
and databases. The staff has learnt English to communicate with the counterparts,
almost all of the staff have a passable command of English and
many speak good English. The capacity to carry out surveys has been improved,
and so on. However, the ten years have also given us insights into
problems and obstacles and also ideas about how to overcome the problems.
Some of the lessons learnt are listed in the following.
The understanding between partners is crucial.
This is often an obstacle to the smooth running of the project, at least in
the first year(s). The process of ‘getting to know each other’ and building