The ASEAN Community Statistical System (ACSS12) Committee held its 12th session from November 21st to November 23rd, 2022, and was attended by the Heads of ASEAN National Statistical Offices (NSOs), as well as International Organizations and Development Partners. The meeting was digitally hosted by Cambodia’s National Institute of Statistics (NIS) as Chair and Indonesia’s Badan Pusat Statistik (Statistics Indonesia) as Co-Chair of the ACSS12 Committee.
The ACSS was established since 2011 and has been continuing its efforts to provide relevant, timely and comparable ASEAN statistics in support of ASEAN integration monitoring and evidence-based policy and decision making. The session was also participated by the International Organisations and Development Partners. The ACSS consistently strengthening its cooperation to enhance statistical capacities of the ASEAN Member States (AMS) and the ASEAN Secretariat.
Malaysia was represented by the Department of Statistics Malaysia (DOSM) led by the Chief Statistician Malaysia, YBhg Dato’ Sri Dr. Mohd Uzir Mahidin. The ACSS members together deliberated the committee’s key deliverables and endorsed the statistical activities and frameworks that have been developed to strengthen the statistical cooperation among the AMS, which are the implementation of ACSS Strategic Plan 2016-2025 and Annual Work Plan (AWP), progress in data harmonisation and other statistical development related issues.
Among others are revisit the Code of Practice; Methodological Guide for Trade in Services; Monitoring of AWP 2022 implementation in line with the 2022 Preliminary Progress of KPIs in M&E of ACSS Strategic Plan; Progress on data harmonisation in key fields of statistics; Implementation of Big Data Pilot Project in 2022; ACSS Open Data Implementation Framework; ASEAN Statistical Dashboard; ASEAN-Help-ASEAN Framework (AHAF); 2022 ASEAN SDG Snapshot Report and others.
Malaysia appreciates ASEANStats and AMS’s efforts in implementing the AHAF courses under each ACSS Working Group, which helped improve capacity building among the members. Dr. Uzir thanked all AMS for their overwhelming support and encouragement in sharing their experiences and expertise in assisting other member countries in developing statistical capacity in accordance with the ACSS Strategic Plan 2021-2025 during the ACSS12. The AHAF programme also encourages AMS to strengthen international cooperation to provide high-quality national and ASEAN statistics. Malaysia strongly encourages expanding this AHAF sharing platform and ensures that each implementation of the programme or activity achieves the desired goal. During the ACSS12, DOSM shared Malaysia latest developments, best practices and experiences on NSO’s Roles in National Data Governance and Data Stewardship as Malaysia is currently adapting and evolving its data ecosystem.
On 25th and 26th April 2022, Malaysia as the lead country for the ACSS 2022 Big Data Project provided technical assistance on “Price Statistics” to Lao Statistics Bureau (LSB) by sharing exercises Octoparse software to collect prices of various products from websites that were suggested by LSB.
DOSM would like to congratulate ASEAN Member States that have successfully participated in the ACSS 2022 Big Data Project and will always be committed to assisting AMS in capacity building to ensure the success of the project. Dr. Uzir said, “DOSM will also be participating again in ACSS 2023 Big Data Pilot Project with another new project on Poverty Estimation with Satellite Imagery and we encourage all AMS to participate again in our next pilot project”.
Malaysia is looking forward to participating in the 13th Session of the ASEAN Community Statistical System (ACSS13) Committee which will be held from 22nd to 24th November 2023 and will be chaired by Statistics Indonesia.
