| Project Detail |
Project Development Objective
PDO Statement
27. To improve the quality and efficiency of welfare data collection, and accessibility to comparable welfare
data in Kiribati.
PDO Level Indicators
(a) Sub-national precision improved based on a constant per-survey cost
(b) Number of survey datasets produced during the project lifetime using improved electronic data
capture systems
(c) Share of HIES datasets available for open access
(d) Number of comparable regional indicators produced
B. Project Components
Component 1: Innovation and capacity building in data collection (US$1.42 million equivalent)
28. Under Component 1, the project will finance innovations and capacity building in data collection. The
activities are divided into two subcomponents, as follows:
Subcomponent 1.1: 2023/24 Household Income and Expenditure Survey
29. The subcomponent will finance data collection using new methods as recommended by the PSMB. The
project addresses short-term data deprivation by providing financing to conduct the next round of the HIES,
scheduled for 2023/2024, using the agreed methodology. The project will also support the analysis of the data
collected and public dissemination of the results of the survey. Specifically, the project will finance the operational
costs of the survey, including hiring a resident advisor for statistics to manage the HIES, wages for supervisors and
enumerators to conduct the survey, supervisor and enumerator training, travel and accommodation,
procurement of hardware and software for data collection and analysis, the costs of publishing and disseminating
the results, and any other associated logistics costs. In addition, the project seeks to address longer-term data
deprivation by introducing new methods for the HIES that reduce the costs of data collection in terms of money
and time, while at the same time improving the quality of the collected data. Countries are often reluctant to try
new methods due to large up-front costs or complexity of implementation; this project addresses this challenge
by covering the initial costs of innovation, including procurement of hardware and training of NSO staff and
enumerators, to support the implementation of the HIES. In addition, because the recommendations will flow
through SPC-SDD and the PSMB, innovation will not take place at the price of regional comparability.
30. The subcomponent will also support institutional and technical capacity building of the KNSO to analyze
the data and publish the results. The project will build technical capacity of NSO staff on statistical software
packages, HIES analysis, poverty measurement, and incorporating thematic/sectoral lenses to poverty analysis,
such as tourism, agriculture, disability, and gender. The capacity-building activities comprise a combination of a
resident advisor who remains in-house throughout the HIES implementation, just-in-time technical assistance
from a roster of international and regional experts (which will be facilitated by the SPC in its emerging role as a
regional ‘systems leader’), and peer-to-peer learning between NSOs. The subcomponent will finance the
procurement of hardware and software for data processing and analysis, as well as any costs of publishing and
disseminating the results.
31. Capacity building for the KNSO is based on an embedded international resident advisor. An important
lesson learned from previous statistical capacity-building projects in other low-capacity or thin-capacity
environments is the importance of having a daily presence in the KNSO to support the project preparation and
implementation. In these types of organizations, many of the senior staff with the technical knowledge and
experience necessarily have administrative responsibilities that limit the time that they can devote to technical
tasks or to mentoring young staff. An international resident advisor means that there is always staff with the
required technical skills and knowledge of the local context to continue moving the project forward. Resident
advisors will be twinned with a KNSO staff member to facilitate skill transfer and backstopped by the statistics
advisor hired under the SPC-SDD project to ensure consistent advice across countries. In other similar projects,
the international advisor has provided hands-on training to local staff in important skills such as sample design,
programming for electronic data capture, or analysis using software packages (Stata, R). The repeated nature of
these interactions allowing for the natural building of knowledge and the strong links to daily activities have shown
to be a much more effective approach to building lasting capacity than either brief intensive trainings or the flyin fly-out model of technical assistance, and this model has been shown to be effective in an ongoing project
supporting statistical capacity development in the Republic of the Marshall Islands. Therefore the resident advisor
will be recruited in the KNSO not later than six months after the effective date of the Financing Agreement to work
on the technical aspects of project implementation.
32. The funding of data collection closes an immediate data gap but is also a platform for improved
methods. While the collection of the HIES data is considered a core responsibility of the NSO, there is rarely the
opportunity for methodological improvements. The good practice of data collection and analysis requires comparability between rounds to understand the trends in well-being and other socioeconomic statistics. The
reluctance to break the series results in methodologies being ‘sticky’ or resistant to change. In addition, there is a
risk associated with incorporating new methods such as CAPI or electronic data collection. The program focuses
on leveraging the coordinating role of the regional organization to assist with decreasing the risk of breaking the
trend to update the questionnaire design and data collection method. Having the endorsement of the regional
organization and technical advisors in the international community generally bolsters the confidence of NSOs
should they receive questions or pushback on the results generated by the new methods. In addition, the learning
associated with implementing the HIESs using these improved methods has strong spillover effects on other NSO
activities; for example, training and experience in CAPI data collection is transferrable to all other field activities.
33. This component also provides an opportunity to directly improve the collection of data on gender gaps.
The questionnaire design updates above will include, at aminimum, the collection of data that enables sexdisaggregated analysis on poverty, welfare, and other information typically collected in the HIES, such as the
collection of individual-level information on employment/labor market outcomes as well as some human capital
indicators. These and other efforts will provide decision makers with better information about the nature and
scale of the social and economic barriers holding back women and girls and will inform policies to close gender
gaps and track progress on gender-related interventions.
34. Timely release of the report and dataset will boost policy relevance and open the opportunity for the
national and international research community to contribute to the dialogue. The resulting dataset from the
project-financed HIES round will be cleaned, compiled, analyzed, documented, and disseminated on time, ideally
with the survey report and anonymized microdata being released no later than 12 months after the collection of
the last interview. This focus on the timely release of results and the release of the microdata at the same time as
the report is a marked change from the long delays common in the region.
Subcomponent 1.2: Data collection for economic statistics
35. The project will also support the collection of price and economic data in identified outer islands (Makin,
Abemama, Arorae, Kiritimati, Teeraina, and Tabuaeran) to close key data gaps in economic statistics. Highquality and timely economic statistics are integral to obtaining an accurate measure of the size and composition
of the national economy. According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Article IV report on data gaps, “the
authorities underlined that they are already stretched in their capacity to develop the main macroeconomic
indicators and would appreciate assistance from international institutions and donors in compiling the needed
statistics.” The IMF notes that GDP estimates have improved due to technical assistance from the Pacific Financial
Technical Assistance Centre but that “further capacity building would be needed to continue to improve the
quality of GDP estimates, particularly expenditure-based GDP estimates.” Financial sector statistics should be a
priority.
36. The project will prioritize price data and economic data collection in the identified outer islands.
Currently price data are collected only in South Tarawa, which covers roughly half of the national population.
While in many contexts this coverage would be sufficient, particularly given the use of the Australian dollar as the
national currency, the dispersed geography and reliance on imported goods mean that different islands can have
price structures and economic activities that differ greatly from South Tarawa. The project will expand price and
economic data collection to six additional islands (Makin, Abemama, Arorae, Kiritimati, Teeraina, and Tabuaeran),
which cover an additional 15 percent of the population, and add the only other urban area in Kiritimati, thereby
bringing the total coverage to 66 percent. These areas were also selected strategically as Makin is the furthest island to the north and Arorae is the furthest island to the south, and therefore these locations would be where
plane and ship transportation costs would be at a maximum. The Government has implemented a freight levy
policy to maintain cost parity between locations, but price data are required to determine its effectiveness. These
areas also contain a large share of the copra cutters and are therefore important to understanding the impact on
the local economy of the Government’s decision to raise the price of copra. Finally, regular visits to these locations
facilitate the collection of conversion factors for nonstandard units, which are a key input to accurately measuring
and pricing home production and sales in the HIES. The project will finance quarterly visits to Kiritimati to collect
data on prices and sector data relevant for national accounts and twice annual visits to the other outer islands.
After the first 18 months of data collection, the project will assess the marginal gains of the additional collection
rounds and modify (increase or decrease) the collection frequency or change the locations as appropriate.
Component 2: Institutional strengthening (US$0.355 million equivalent)
37. Under Component 2, the project will support activities that strengthen the institutional and technical
capacities of the KNSO to improve the enabling environment for data collection in Kiribati. Aside from financing,
NSO capacity is often a binding constraint to the quality and frequency of data collection. This component will
carry out activities to strengthen the institutional and technical capacity of the KNSO, including, but not limited to
those described in the following paragraphs.
(a) Institutional Review
38. An institutional review will identify constraints in the organizational structure of the KNSO. Oftentimes,
the structure of NSOs evolves organically based on opportunistic funding from the Government and development
partners. The organization chart and reporting structure can become dated and inefficient under this model, with
staff and skill levels not always appropriately aligned to positions and requirements. An institutional review will
examine the current and immediate future work programs of the NSO based on the upcoming National Strategy
for the Development of Statistics (NSDS), which is currently being prepared with assistance from SPC-SDD. This
review will identify areas where technology could improve efficiency and recommend staff reallocation or
retraining based on a more streamlined structure, as well as serve as the basis for any new staffing requests made
to the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development (MFED).
(b) Review of Kiribati’s legal and regulatory framework on statistics
39. A regional and global comparative analysis of Statistics Acts and other legislation on NSOs for revising
Kiribati’s Statistics Act will be carried out. A key component of institutional strengthening is to formalize and
clarify the official mandate of the NSO, as well as the scope of its roles and responsibilities within the machinery
of government. This objective is particularly relevant in determining the scope of the KNSO’s authority regarding
the coordination and collation of data from other government agencies (see activity 2(c) below). The work under
this subcomponent will proceed in two phases. First, the project will finance a consultant to carry out a
comparative study of other Statistics Acts in the Pacific and other parts of the world. Following the complementary
activities of 2(a) and 2(c), as well as a review of the activities proposed in the NSDS, the consultant will make a
recommendation if new legislation is necessary and if so, propose a draft text that is appropriate to the scope of
work of the NSO. It is expected that any new legislation would include relevant legal clauses on data sharing to
support those activities described in activity 2(c).
The project will support the analysis of the KNSO’s role as data coordinator across government agencies.
Line ministries in Kiribati collect their own data and use their own internal Information Units (IUs) for data
archiving and analysis. This approach results in an environment where IUs and the KNSO do not share data openly
and do not have interoperable systems. The project would fund technical assistance to assess how the KNSO can
play a coordinator role across these IUs and to design an integrated system that could be used across agencies to
improve the overall quality of evidence-based policy making. The initial activities will be supported by the resident
advisor and will include a stocktaking of the data availability, an assessment of the ability to link datasets from
IUs, and stakeholder engagement to build support for data sharing. Following these activities, the project will
support the development of an appropriate internal data sharing platform for the Government of Kiribati and
issue a set of recommendations on improving links between IUs. The resident advisor will then support the KNSO
in providing training to counterparts in the relevant line ministries on the use of the data platform. |
