Syllabus
Important International Institutions, Effect of Policies & Politics of Countries on India’s Interests(GS2)
Source
The Hindu,2/10/2023
Context
The World Bank’s compilation of Statistical Performance Indicators (SPI) ranks India 67 among 174 countries.
Content
- Statistical Performance Indicators and Index (SPI) are the World Bank’s official tool to measure a country’s statistical capacity.
- The Statistical Performance Indicators (SPI) provide an open-source framework for assessing the performance of statistical systems and the efforts to improve them.
- The SPI is conceptually motivated, builds on a mathematical foundation, and significantly expands the number of indicators and the number of covered countries compared to its predecessor.
Statistical Performance
- The statistical performance of economies is defined by how well, how broadly, and how frequently national statistical systems collect, produce, and disseminate high-quality data in a publicly accessible manner.
- The national statistical system (NSS) provides stakeholders (from policymakers to stock market analysts) and the public with the latest data on the country’s socioeconomic developments.
- Quality statistics are essential for evidence-based policymaking, assessing and improving the capacity of country’s statistical systems etc.
- Also, monitoring progress on global initiatives, such as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), requires high-quality data that must be produced in a consistent and comparable manner across different national statistical systems.
Statistical Performance Indicators (SPI)
- The World Bank compiles SPIs to assess the performance of national statistical systems across 174 countries.
- The SPI is based on the assessment of five dimensions of performance, commonly referred to as the “five pillars” of a national statistical system, i.e., data use; data services; data products; data sources, and data infrastructure.
- The Statistical Performance Indicators measure the capacity and maturity of national statistical systems by assessing the use of data, the quality of services, the coverage of topics, the sources of information, and the infrastructure and availability of resources.
- The goal is to improve development outcomes and track progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals.
- SPI framework will give countries incentives to build better statistical systems and will help create data ecosystems that can develop and adapt to the requirements of governments and citizens – so that better data can support better decisions.
- To build confidence in the SPI all data and code are open and will be updated in March each year.
Pillars of the SPI framework
The SPI framework assesses the maturity and performance of national statistical systems in five key areas, called pillars. The five pillars are:
- Data Use: Statistics have value only if they are used. So the first pillar is data use. A successful statistical system produces data that are used widely and frequently.
- Data Services: A range of services connects data users to producers and facilitate dialogues between them, thus building trust and a sense of value.
- Data Products: The dialogues between users and producers drive the design and range of statistical products and their accuracy, timeliness, frequency, comparability, and levels of disaggregation. The products signal whether countries are able to produce indicators related to the 17 Sustainable Development Goals.
- Data Sources: To create useful products, the statistical system needs to draw on sources inside and outside the government. Data collection thus goes beyond the typical censuses and surveys to include administrative and geospatial data as well as data generated by private firms and citizens.
- Data Infrastructure: A mature statistical system has well-developed hard infrastructure (legislation, governance, standards) and soft infrastructure (skills, partnerships) as well as the financial resources to deliver useful and widely used data products and services.
Implications of SPI
- Assessment : SPI provides an open-source framework for assessing the performance of statistical systems.
- Guidance: By identifying the strengths and weaknesses of statistical systems, SPI can guide decisions about investment priorities.
- Peer Learning: SPI can help identify peer countries from which nations might learn.
- Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): It signals whether countries are able to produce indicators related to the 17 Sustainable Development Goals.
- Development Indicators Correlation: The index has a strong correlation with other common development indicators such as GDP per capita, governance, human capital, poverty, and inequality. It can also accommodate future improvements as the global data landscape evolves.
SPI and India
- India’s overall SPI score stands at 70.4, placing it in the 67th rank (ranks are self-computed) among the 174 countries assessed.
| India’s SPI Overall Score: 70.4 (2019) |
| Pillar 1 – Data use: 80.0 |
| Pillar 2 – Data Services: 88.0 |
| Pillar 3 – Data Products: 60.0 |
| Pillar 4 – Data Sources: 68.9 |
| Pillar 5 – Data Infrastructure: 55.0 |
- India’s Rank 2019 (SPI Overall Rank: 67; Pillar 1 – Data Use: 101; Pillar 2 – Data Services: 35; Pillar 3 – Data Products: 105; Pillar 4 – Data sources: 31; Pillar 5 – Data infrastructure: 73).
Source: World Bank data
- The pillar-wise scores show India’s lower performance in the ‘Data use’ and ‘Data products’ pillars, with scores of 80 and 60, respectively, resulting in poor rankings of 101 (with an average rank of 116.5) and 105.
Data Use
- The score in the ‘Data use’ category depends on how different sectors of society, including the legislature, executive, civil society, academia, and international bodies, utilize the statistics produced by the system.
- The SPI assessment 2019 considered only data usage by international bodies.
- India performs well in measures assessing the comparability of estimates of child mortality, debt reporting, drinking water, and labour force participation.
- However, it loses 20 points due to the unavailability of comparable poverty estimates for the World Bank over the last 10 years (from 2017).
- This stems from a new comparability indicator introduced by the World Bank’s PovcalNet for poverty estimation.
- It is important to note that India did produce poverty estimates within this period through the NSS Consumption Expenditure Survey.
| PovcalNet is a computational tool that allows users to estimate poverty rates for regions, sets of countries or individual countries, over time and at any poverty line. PovcalNet is managed jointly by the Data and Research Groups in the World Bank’s Development Economics Division. |
Data Products
- The pillar ‘Data Products’ anchors the national statistical system’s performance around the essential data required for Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
- To improve upon this, India has taken the right step by conducting a Multiple Indicator Survey and Comprehensive Annual Modular Survey in the NSS 78th round (2020-21) and 79th round (2022-23), respectively, for collection of data on SDGs.
Data Infrastructure
- Regarding ‘Data infrastructure’, India’s score is 55, ranking 73.
- This pillar encompasses five sub-dimensions: ‘Legislation and Governance’, ‘Standards and Methods’, ‘Skills’, ‘Partnership’, and ‘Finance’ (‘Skills’ and ‘Partnership’ were not considered for SPI 2019).
- India’s scores for ‘Legislation and Governance’ are high, given that the national statistical legislation aligns well with the Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics.
- The overall score for ‘Data infrastructure’ is diminished due to moderate performance in ‘Standards and methods’ and poor performance in ‘Finance’.
- The score in ‘Standards and Methods’ dimension decreases due to the non-adoption of the latest standards for classifying employment status.
- The ‘Finance’ category receives a low score since, according to the World Bank, India’s national statistical plan lacks full funding.
Data Services and Data Sources
- India excels in data services (score 88, rank 35) and data sources (score 68.9, rank 31), securing a place in the top quintile for these pillars.
- Under data sources, three indicators are evaluated (with the fourth indicator not considered in 2019): censuses and surveys, administrative data, and geospatial data.
- Among these indicators, censuses and surveys (score: 100/100 for censuses and 86.6/100 for surveys) contribute the most to India’s ranking, followed by administrative data (score: 50/100), and finally, geospatial data (score: 38.9/100).
- The relatively low score of administrative data is mainly due to non-fulfilment of criteria of at least 90% registration of births under the Civil Registration System (CRS).
- The World Bank has taken the estimate of coverage under CRS from the UN SDG monitoring database, which shows estimates of coverage as 89% for children under five and 87% for children under one .
- However, these estimates are actually derived from the National Family Health Survey conducted between 2019 and 2021— a period significantly affected by lockdowns following COVID-19.
- Conversely, the publication of the Office of the Registrar General of India), “Vital Statistics of India”, cites the coverage of births under CRS for 2019 at approximately 93%,which is a much more reliable source than NFHS for estimation of coverage of CRS.
- India’s commendable rank of 40 in the ‘Openness’ score from Open Data Inventory deserves recognition.
Way Forward
- Eventhough India gets full points for data releases and data services, avenues for improvement remain in terms of online accessibility.
- Enhancements in this area could be achieved by improving download options, providing more comprehensive metadata availability, and open terms for data usage.
- Also,Improve the utilization of data in policy-making and public discourse to increase the score in the ‘Data use’ pillar.
- Enhance the quality and diversity of statistical products to improve the ‘Data products’ pillar score.
- Continue conducting comprehensive surveys like the Multiple Indicator Survey and Comprehensive Annual Modular Survey for collection of data on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
- Invest in improving the data infrastructure to increase its score.
- Address questions about the credibility of the statistics produced and the competence of official statisticians.
Reference
- https://www.worldbank.org/en/programs/statistical-performance-indicators/about-spi
- https://www.nature.com/articles/s41597-023-01971-0
Practice Question
Discuss the key statistical performance indicators used by the World Bank.Identify the sectors where India has shown significant improvement over the years and those where improvement is needed.