High Level Forum on Official Statistics: Beyond GDP: Rethinking Progress in a Changing World (57th Statistical Commission Side Event)

As you know, I'm Swiss, so I'm already five minutes late. Good afternoon and welcome. It's my pleasure to open and welcome you to the Monday High Level Forum on Official Statistic Health as an annual side event of the United Nations Statistical Commission. So the forum provides a space to reflect on the evolving needs and emerging challenges facing national statistical offices and national statistical systems around the world. Today our focus is the global movement to go beyond gdp.

We will explore how national and international statistical systems can support the development and implementation of broader measures of progress on sustainable development, measures that complement and extend beyond cross domestic domestic product. We also might find out what it means for sustainable development by 2030 and beyond. So it's my honor to introduce you the speaker of the opening remarks. We are privileged to be joined by Guy Ryder, Undersecretary for policy at the U.N. and that. It's a great pleasure for me, Undersecretary.

We are deeply grateful for your leadership and for joining us today. The floor is yours.

Well, thank you very much, Chair. And let me at the outset present apologies on behalf of the Deputy Secretary General Amina Mohammed, who had wanted to deliver this message this afternoon, but unfortunately

she's blocked outside New York at the moment and unable to be with you and she's asked me to read her message on. On her behalf. I begin. Chair Thanking you for the invitation, but

also for your very distinguished service throughout the statistical commission's 56th session. Georg, we're very grateful for everything that you've done. And as you hand over the chair tomorrow, I understand it is fitting that one of your final acts is to convene this forum on the topic of such consequence for the future. Distinguished delegates, ladies and gentlemen, it's a pleasure to join you for today's forum.

Beyond GDP is at the heart of how we understand progress and whether what we measure truly reflects what we value. For too long we have measured progress by gross domestic product alone. It has helped us measure economic activity. But it cannot tell us whether people are thriving, whether opportunity is broadly shared, or whether today's gains are being built on borrowed time. Borrowed time from future generations and from the planet itself.

The Secretary General named this for what it is, a quote, glaring blind spot, unquote, in how we measure prosperity and progress. This in his Our Common Agenda Report. The call to address our over reliance on GDP resonated with Member States in the Pact of the Future. They mandated the Secretary General to establish an independent high level expert group on beyond GDP to develop recommendations for a limited number of country owned and universally applicable indicators that complement or go beyond GDP. And since the group's appointment in May of 2025, I followed its work very closely.

And I want to acknowledge two members of the Expert Group who are with us, I think, online today and who you'll be hearing from shortly. Nora Lustig, one of the Group's distinguished co chairs, and Martine Durand, former Chief Statistician of the oecd, a leader well known to many of you in this room. And I want to thank both Nora and Martine, and indeed every member of the Group for the dedication to the work that they have done beyond their internal deliberations. They have undertaken extensive consultations with stakeholders around the world. The Group's recommendations will soon be finalized and submitted to the Secretary General for publication.

And this will be followed by a UN led intergovernmental process. This is where recommendations become shared commitments and where the real work of adoption and implementation can begin. And this is precisely where your role, the role of the Statistical Commission and the global statistical community is central. If this agenda is to move forward, your support will be critical. We need your technical rigor to test what is feasible and to turn ambition into practice.

Your decades building global statistical standards, the System of National Accounts, the system of environmental, economic accounting, guidance on demographic and social statistics, the SDG Indicator Framework have given the world a common language for measurement. This legacy is the foundation for what comes next as the dashboard and recommendations are refined and prepared for country uptake. I also want to recognise the depth of expertise within this Commission's membership and its Technical group, several of whom will speak today. Your work has contributed to the foundations on which the Expert Group has built. And at the same time, let me

be honest about the pressure national statistical offices are under. You're being asked, like others, to do more with less, to meet rising demand for timely and disaggregated data, to integrate new sources and to protect quality, confidentiality and public confidence. All at once. The SDG has created a powerful impetus

to strengthen statistical systems and real progress has indeed been made. And yet we know that persistent data gaps remain. The Beyond GDP agenda offers a critical opportunity to revitalize political attention and replenish resources to invest in national statistical capacity, to modernize data production systems and to expand what we can measure in ways that are comparable, credible and country owned. Importantly, the Beyond GDP and the SDG frameworks reinforce one another, drawing on overlapping indicators and data systems.

By advancing the Beyond GDP recommendations, we strengthen the very foundation that countries rely on to monitor and accelerate Progress on the SDGs as always, our goal is measurement that changes policy behavior and ultimately lives. In this case, measurement that reshapes how governments allocate budgets, how international institutions assess

country needs, and how the financial sector directs investment and how citizens hold institutions to account. And that means the measures we advance must be practical, intuitive and actionable. So let us approach this next phase as a partnership between those who produce statistics and those who use them. Let us protect rigor, comparability and trust whilst embracing responsible data innovations that support timeliness, disaggregation and effective policy action.

And if we get this right, we will equip countries with a better compass for policymaking, one that reflects what people value, what sustains well being over time, and what it will take to build inclusive, resilient economies for this generation and those that follow. And I thank you very much.

Thank you very much Under Secretary Guy Ryder for your insightful reflection and for taking the time to be with us today. We truly appreciate your presence and I'll give the floor to Our keynote speaker is Natalie Delorme, Associated Political Affairs Officer at Beyond Lab, an initiative founded by the United nations based in Geneva where she advanced key policy initiatives, strategic planning and multi stakeholder partnerships for sustainable development. Natalie leads the Youth Moving Beyond GDP initiative which has been instrumental in bringing intergenerational perspective to the Beyond GDP process, helping to shape and inspire new approaches to measuring progress on sustainable development. Nathalie, please, the floor is yours.

Thank you very much, Distinguished Chair Dear Under Secretary General, Excellencies and colleagues, it's an honor to be here today at the High Level Forum on Official Statistics at such a critical moment for the global Beyond GDP movement.

Today, as national statistical offices, expert groups and policymakers reflect on how to measure progress on sustainable development, we are not simply refining indicators, we are redefining what matters for people and planet, for current and future generations. And crucially, we are deciding who gets to shape that definition. As already mentioned by the Chair, the Beyond Labor Our mandate is to bring together diverse actors to experiment, co create and test forward looking ideas, solutions and methods. We are a collaborative and creative space, a do and think tank advancing social innovation for long term sustainable development, grounded in a sustainable development goals and intentionally looking toward regenerative development. As mentioned, we One of the initiatives I lead is the Youth Moving Beyond GDP, a partnership between Rethinking Economics International and UN Trade and Development.

The initiative was born back in 2023 from a simple but urgent recognition. If we are redesigning how we measure progress beyond gdp, young people who are not just the inheritors of those systems. But today's change makers need to be part and at the driving seat as co architects of this process. It is the partnership between those who produce and those that use statistics just mentioned by USG Rider and it is not about symbolism, it is about systemic coherence. It is also about inclusion, participation and future proofing the way we shape our systems by putting intergenerational equity as a key defining principle at the heart of it.

The Initiative's Youth Network on Beyond GDP now brings together over 1000 young people from over 90 countries, mostly from the Global south and I want to make one point clear here. It is about ensuring that space exists for young economists, statisticians, activists and community leaders from around the world to directly shape global global economic discourse. Space for those who operate in context where fiscal constraints, climate vulnerability and demographic change are not abstract debates but lived realities. And they have throughout the process from representatives of the Youth Network joining the very first consultation of the Secretary General's High Level Expert Group at the High Level Political Forum to co hosting our joint side event at the World Social Summit where both the Expert Group's interim report as well as the Youth Network's recommendation were jointly presented. Most importantly, their recommendation, as has been mentioned, have been carefully considered and integrated by the Expert group and this is intergenerationally equitable policymaking in practice.

A bridge between grassroots action and expertise and high level decision making. It demonstrates that structured evidence based youth engagement is not only possible, but it strengthens the process. It's also a model for participatory policymaking that can be scaled up to other processes and groups. Today, I would like to contribute the Youth Network's guiding principle and substantive contributions on Beyond GDP to the critical work of national statistical offices to ensure relevance with young people's priorities and experiences on the ground. Three pillars underpin our approach.

First, a human rights based rationale Indicators must uphold dignity, equality and justice for all. Measurements cannot be neutral if they invisibilize exclusion. Second, intergenerational justice decisions today must safeguard the well being of both present and future generations. This requires long term horizons in statistical design and embedding sustainability into measurement progress. Third, country owned yet globally relevant solutions must reflect local realities and capabilities while contributing to our shared global goals.

These principles strongly resonate with the Expert Group's integral universal framework for well being, equity and inclusion and sustainability. Building on these principles, the Youth Network identified five thematic areas that we believe must be made visible by Beyond GDP metrics to resonate with current and future generations. First, participatory and fair governance and ensuring transparent, accountable governance that empowers young people and fosters intergenerational decision making. Second, equity inclusion and knowledge justice, guaranteeing intersectional equity and inclusive knowledge systems for all generations. It means future proof, education and epistemic inclusion including indigenous knowledge and lived experience and it means digital inclusion and data dignity.

Third, resilient well being, promoting social, economic and environmental resilience across individual, community and national levels. At the individual level, mental and physical health, happiness and dignity at the community level, social cohesion, trust networks and cultural vitality. At the national levels, adaptive capacity, crisis preparedness and the care economy. Fourth, planetary boundaries and environmental justice, respecting ecological limits and recognizing nature as a rights bearing entity. This implies integrating circular economy and regenerative capacity metrics, international frameworks and valuing and preserving natural assets so that progress reflects renewal rather than depletion and lastly, spillover accountability, tracking and mitigating transparency impacts and spillover effects to uphold global fairness and responsibility for national statistical offices.

These thematic areas reinforce your work those already mentioned by USG Rider. They enforce existing frameworks such as the SDG indicators, environmental, economic accounting and well being measurements while asking are we making the invisible visible? Are we giving voice to the voiceless? Are we measuring what truly matters for humans to thrive on a healthy planet? Colleagues, the experience of the youth network enabled through champions across the system such as today's organizers shows that intergenerational equity can be institutionalized, that young people engage constructively with an equal voice with expert bodies that their recommendations not only inform high level deliberations, they enrich them.

As we move into the intergovernmental process following the high level expert group's recommendation, the question is not whether young people should be included. The question is how do we embed structured, meaningful and sustained engagement with the national statistical systems and global processes? Because ultimately going beyond GDP and is about aligning our measurement systems with the kind of present and future we intend to build. Intergenerational equity can no longer be an afterthought, it must be a key design principle of the process moving forward. The statistical community has the tool, the political momentum is here and the voices of young people are ready to contribute.

Let us ensure that when we redefine progress we do so together for current and for generations yet to come. Thank you.

Thank you very much for your perspective on the current work. It's very important. Thank you. And I would like to thank again Under Secretary General Guy Ryder for your presence. We understand you now need to leave to do busy schedules and we wish you a productive rest today.

Thank you very much that you were here. Thank you. Thank you.

It is my pleasure now to turn out our first panel discussion, the global push beyond GDP framework and principles. And I now ask Ms. Martine Durand and Ms. Nora Lustig to join us online.

While we are waiting for Nora and Martine, please let me introduce the session. This session sets the stage by addressing a fundamental question why GDP is no longer sufficient as a sole measure of progress. While GDP has long served and still is as a powerful and standardized indicator of economic activity, it does not capture many of the dimension that matters most to people's lives like inequality, environmental sustainability and well being. As the global community confronts climate change, rising inequalities, demographic shifts and technological transformation, the limitation of relying on a single aggregate economic measure have become increasingly evident. We will also reflect on the outcomes of prior initiatives aimed at at going beyond gdp.

Finally, the session will examine the mandate, work and emerging recommendation of the High Level Expert Group on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Progress. We have the chance today to have two members of the High Level Expert Group on Beyond GDP with us. This group was appointed by the UN Secretary General. It's my pleasure to welcome and introduce two panelists. Co Chair Nora Lustig, Professor Emerita at Toulon University at the founding Director of the Commitment to Equity Institute.

She's also a Visiting professor at El Gorlicio de Mexico and a non residential scholar at several leading research institutes. Her work focused on economic development, inequality and social policy, particularly in Latin America. She has altered and edited numerous influential publications. We are delighted to have you, Nora, here with us to share your insight and present the overview of the work of the High Level Expert Group on the Dashboard of Indicate. Let me also introduce the second panelist, Martine Durand, Collection Consultant in an official statistic, member of the French Official Statistical Authority and co chair of the iOS Krakow Working Group on Data Trust, Misuse and Ethics.

She previously served as a Chief Statistician and Director of Statistics and Data Directorate at the OECD where she provided strategic leadership for the organization's statistical policy and and activity. She led the OECD Better Life Initiative and launched the flagship house LIFE Measured well Being report. Helped to advance the global agenda on measuring well being beyond gdp. We are delighted to have you, Martine, with us to the presence of the conceptual framework development by the High Level Expert Group. Please.

Nora and Martine, the floor is yours.

Okay. Good afternoon. Good evening. Thank you very much. First of all, Mr. Ulrich, for inviting us to make this presentation can you hear me okay?

Perfect. To the High Level Forum, which I think it's very important as a key partner of what we're trying to do in our HLA group, you and your colleagues are the essential partner. And if we are able to see in similar ways the way forward, then I think the probability of succeeding will be quite high. Rather than presenting the introductory slides which I did present in our consultation on January 12 and not repeating myself, as it was said, the High Level Excerpt Group was established by the secretary general in May 2025. And I mean, people have to be aware that we have had a very short period of time to do a very challenging task, which is to come up with a set of limited indicators that will be universally applicable, country owned and at the same time would reflect the multidimensionality and intergenerational dimensions of well being.

I am really happy to hear the predecessors speak, both the USG and Natalie, whom I've had the pleasure now to meet in several fora because we are converging on the same language. So it's. That's already a very successful process because the visions are widely shared among those of us who are pursuing this agenda beyond gdp. As you know, our group is an independent group. It's integrated by 14 experts.

Some of us are academics, others were in multilateral organizations, others are current or past policymakers. Some of us are economists, others come from the statistics field. And that makes the discussion more interesting. The fact that we are a group that comes from diverse backgrounds in our vision, as Natalie already mentioned, we're trying to make the invisible visible. And like unpaid work, we're trying to give voice to the voiceless, like people who are left behind, who are oppressed or the future generations.

We're very concerned about the sustainability of the planet and think that there is an interconnectedness between planet and people that needs to be part of our framework and indicators. And we're also conscious that people do not operate as individuals, but that they're part of a system, a system that goes from families to communities to nations. Very importantly, I always emphasize in my presentations that we're building on what exists. We are not trying to replace gdp. Our proposal, I think should be seen as complementary to the efforts that have been undertaken by the System of National Accounts.

We are basing a lot of our work on existing and complementing existing beyond GDP efforts like the SDGs and many of the national and regional efforts that have been undertaken. And we are very concerned about the broader well being. We want to recognize very much Two very important initiatives in the 1980s, the so called Brundtland Commission and the STIGLEY SENSITUSSI In 2009, our predecessors that are very important in illuminating the road that we have been pursuing. And of course the work that Martine and her colleagues did at oecd, some of which I had the pleasure to collaborate with, has been fundamental in pursuing this agenda and moving it forward. If someone would ask me what is new about our initiative, I think it's important to emphasize the fact that we have a mandate from the countries.

There is a global mandate, as has been expressed in the Back for the Future. That is apparently a new dimension in this type of initiatives. We are also proposing what we consider probably a more ambitious conceptual framework and Martine will delve on that. And we're also trying to explore new measures along with the consciousness, the awareness that we cannot burden national statistical offices with. We're doing new things with less.

But we want to invite. We want to invite the statistical community to think along with us over time. Nothing of what we propose has to be implemented tomorrow. It will take time. Some things may be easier than others.

And also I think we have to take our process as a starting point rather than the end, the beginning of a conversation in which many actors would be crucial, in particular the community we're speaking to today. Thanks very much. Now I turn to Martin to talk about. I'll come back with the dashboard later.

Thank you, Nora. Thank you very much. And good afternoon to everyone in New York. Here In Paris, it's 9 o', clock, but I'm very pleased to be with you and be back, I would say, even if I'm not in New York, back at the Statistical Commission, which I left about five years ago, so very pleased to be part of the community again. So I'm going to take you through the conceptual framework that the high level group came up with and you will see and you will recognize in the features of this conceptual framework many of the points that were indeed raised by Guy Ryder and by Natalie from the Youth Network.

So let me just take you through this slide, which looks very complicated, but was already presented in a perhaps different format at the consultation that we had with the statistical community on 12th of January. Very little changes since then. We've kept this conceptual framework essentially as it was presented already. So the overall objective of what we are trying to, to achieve and is about equitable, inclusive and sustainable well being. For that to happen, if that's the objective that government and citizens and other stakeholders are aiming at, we Believe that, as was mentioned by Natalie, that this objective has to be grounded in the idea of foundational principles.

And we've identified three of those. The first is human rights and the first is peace and security, human rights and second, and then the planetary boundaries. I can't really see the slide on my screen, but that's okay. The three are there and those are the foundational principles and you will all recognize and in fact they resonate with the UN charter. The ability to live in peace rather than violent conflict.

The right to be an equal and respected participating member in society, having agency in one's community and society. And of course the respect for the planet. As interestingly important with planetary. Respecting the planetary boundaries are really something that are the foundation of the house that you see in front of you and. And without which well being cannot be achieved and cannot happen.

So that's the second feature of this framework. First being the equitable, inclusive and sustainable well being. The third feature of this framework is that we're not concentrating on individual's well being, which is often the case in many frameworks that we talk about individual well being, as was mentioned by Nora already, we consider that the individual is extremely increasingly interlinked with the planet where that individual lives, but also in the society, the community where it ends. Whatever happens in one communities, in one society or in one countries has implications globally for other countries. So as you can see at the bottom we say this individual communities, countries, but also global and of course at the cent is our people and the planet.

The fourth element and characteristics of this framework is that we consider today well being, but today not in isolation, because you could achieve well being today, but it could be at the expense of tomorrow's well being. So future generations have to be taken into account. So we are concerned about well being, concerned both for the present and in the future. For the present we have identified a number of domains of current well being and for the. Which are listed here.

And Nora will get to that later on when she speak about the indicators under each of those domains. But for tomorrow we have taken the approach of the capital approach, which is to the idea that we should sustain and maintain capital in various aspects, economic, human, environmental, social, but also institutional capital. And here you will very much recognize the Brundtland approach to sustainable development. Finally, as I said, we really insist, although it's very challenging to get indicators, develop indicators for the cross country and the global aspects of well being and cross country spillovers. But obviously, you know, again, you could achieve well being in one country at the expense of others, for instance, by exporting your pollution or by having social norms in other countries that do not, or labor norms that do not actually are not satisfied in a way that ethically that would be necessary for well being to thrive in other countries.

So finally, something that we do recognize, but we have not tried to, we're not proposing to measure at this stage are the enablers. Of course, that's very important. You know, the stage capacity, technological progress policies, structural policies, and all kind of different things that are very important for well being to happen are necessary. But while we are mentioning them in this pink box, we're not proposing at this stage measurement and measures for this because that would be too complicated. Also because we are focusing on outcomes as opposed to inputs or processes to achieve well being.

So as you can see, this is quite an ambitious framework. We hope that indeed we've been able, through our consultations, to, to reflect on what we heard and that it does represent some kind of a consensus among all the contributors to our thinking thus far. And now giving back the floor to Nora.

Thank you. Thank you, Martin. I was just thinking that maybe in the future we need to present the conceptual framework and bits to start with so that people have a chance to see the entire thing more gradually. It is a crowded conceptual framework, but it means that we have given a lot of thought. Now I am going to not present all the indicators in the dashboard because it would be impossible to do it in this context.

We will share them with the, with the statistical community and the Israel Commission in particular, of course. And we actually would like to invite you to help us stress test what we are proposing to assess whether it is true that what we think can be done relatively quickly is the case or not. When we started thinking about what defines the beyond gdp, I actually borrowed these terms, which probably come from other analysis as well, from my good friend Pedro Consecao at the Human Development Report Office that he defines as a beyond income. Because we incorporate many other dimensions of well being, we want to go beyond averages because if we want to measure equity with equity inclusion deprivations, we need to go beyond the averages in the countries beyond today, as it is, as it has been said, and also beyond national boundaries, which represents one of the biggest challenges, given that there is no convention yet on how to measure spillovers in a way that is acceptable by the international community and forms part of our menu of possible indicators. But I think that's an area that needs pursuing and we'll come back to that later.

So can we go to the Next slide, please. Now, yeah, so what the dashboard of indicators. Just to emphasize that we focused on outcome indicators. We understand that there are many indicators that are related to effort that are very important, but in our view, probably that's a separate effort that the UN could promote in the future. To propose and monitor indicators of effort.

Our task, we circumscribe it to outcome indicators. And in the selection criteria, we did pay attention to data availability, coverage and frequency of publication, whether the indicators are intuitive and the country's statistical capacity. And also we are introducing some challenges which I think are important to be part of this exercise. Otherwise it could have been just an exercise of selecting a subset of the SDGs. Roughly 50% of the indicators that we have chosen so far come from the SDGs.

And the number of indicators that we have are about 30. We're still discussing some of them, but it's a number right now is around 30. And like we say on the slide, the dashboard should be seen as an evolving tool. In fact, evolving because we need to stress this now, but also over time, things that today seem unimportant or unmeasurable may become important and, or measurable. And also things that are important today may not be important in the future.

So this type of exercise has to be seen as something fluid. Next slide, please. So we decided to include indicators for the foundational principles separate from the dashboard indicators that go for the eight domains that we have selected. But here, you know, we're trying to introduce a color coding that considers things that are in purple, things that need to be, need to find a new

house, because they're no longer being produced by the ones who were producing them in the past. So availability may mean something that exists today, but if it's not for sure going to exist tomorrow, we put it as something that needs to be explored further. But we've chosen a few indicators to reflect the foundational principles, which we are not trying to argue that these really cover all the fundamental aspects that are part of the foundational principles, but that they are emblematic of them in a way that capture things that are important.

These are the indicators that we have suggested for the foundational principles, and they come after we did have consultations with people who are experts on PE and violence, the human rights community, and of course, the community that is working on making the planet sustainable. Next slide, please.

These are some classific indicators that are part of our domains. The material well being we would like to be able to have at some point. The household disposal income per capita may be equivalent as The OECD does, but I think it's very important. We think it's very important that an effort is made to increase the coverage of this indicator. It exists in many countries, but not in all.

And it's really the income indicator that tells you the most about what goes into people's material well being, since it is about what is the disposal income of households. We also think that there are indicators that we would like to find new options. For example, the human capital, the capital indicators where we found the most challenges. And at this point we're following something that the European Commission has been following, which is using capital without trying to aggregate the capitals into one number, so not ascribing to them prices or monetary values. But even the measurement of capital in many of the important dimensions is still unclear.

I think that, for example, the challenge to measure human capital well is fundamental because with the rapid change in technology, and particularly labor displacing technology and labor displacing technology in ways that are different from the past, the human capital may go into depletion or depreciation in ways that are very different from how we conceived it in the past. So an effort has to be made in that direction. Next, please.

So for the data agenda, one thing you know, we do not disaggregate every indicator by gender. We have some gender specific indicators in our dashboard. But we invite the statistical offices and the different actors throughout the world to actually disaggregate indicators by gender and other socially relevant categories whenever applicable. We also think it's important to leverage the custodian agencies that already take care of some of the indicators that are in the SDGs and for the indicators that are not part of the SDGs and do not have a current custodian agency. I think it would be very important that the international community selects an agency to be the custodian because that has helped to establish the norms and conventions and data collection that has made possible all what we can see now in the collection of SDGs.

One important thing to emphasize is that our dashboard indicators, the adoption is expected to be gradual and that it has to be accompanied by a very thought through process of capacity building and financial aid whenever necessary for that capacity to take place and for the indicators to be collected. So it doesn't have to be seen as something daunting, but something in which we expect the statistical community to be part of our endeavor. Finally, I wanted to say that we have been exploring headline indicators with the idea that sometimes dashboards are great, they're transparent, you can see exactly what you're measuring. But it's very hard to assess progress because some indicators can go up, others go down, or indicators can move at different speeds and implicitly, even if it's not explicit. When decisions are made at the policymaking level, weights are assigned to the different dimensions that compose well being.

So we've been exploring options of headline indicators that at this point we don't have time to come to a consensus. They will be included as examples in our report and they will be included also in terms of how, what kind of information you can obtain from them. And we want to again invite the statistical community to think through with us what would be the best way to try to capture the multidimensionality in a succinct indicator that would help policymaking and tracking progress. Thank you very much. Now we will move to the recommendations.

So I'm going to turn the MIC again to my colleague Martine.

Thank you, Nora. So, as was mentioned by Guy Ryder at the beginning of our session, it's all good and well to have indicators and statistics of progress, but the objective ultimately is to change policies, behavior and lives so that what we're doing and proposing will have an impact, will change the way people will behave, the way governments are making their decisions, but in the end, hopefully improve the lives of people. We shouldn't lose sight of this overall objective. So in our report, we will have recommendations for different stakeholders, for national governments, for the UN and international organizations, and of course, for the statistical community. So I'm going to go very briefly through those different and we also, by the way, think that, as Natalie said at the beginning, it's extremely important that citizens, civil societies, NGOs are part of the agenda and are participating in this whole beyond GDP process.

So we do have also, we cannot say recommendations, but we have advice also for the civil society to be active participants in this agenda. But now I'm going to just present a few of those recommendations dealing with national governments, national UN and international organizations. And I'll finish with the state statistical community, because that's who you are and what's probably you're most interested in. But nevertheless, we, as I said, we should not lose sight that, you know, having statistics is great, but we need to focus on both building the capacity, the statistical capacity, the information, but also the demand and the use by governments if we want to achieve our objective. Because, you know, statistical capacity without political commitment produces unused data, and political commitment without statistical capacity produces empty rhetoric most of the time.

So for national governments, as you can see, we focus on a few recommendations, and the first one being that national governments should establish national measuring progress initiatives and adopt a multidimensional framework to guide their policies. Importantly, that was a point made by Guy Ryder as well. To do so, that they need to have the data and statistics that are necessary. And so they should not, while they're discussing budget cuts, go back to cutting the investment in data and statistics to quite the contrary, it's now time to increase investment in statistical capacity, including through ODA and through South AS Corporation and all other means to help in particular the least developed countries. They should also give responsibility to national statistical offices for dashboard delivery because, you know, increasingly you see that since data are everywhere, then they will take any data, rather than quality data that are coming from statistical office.

But importantly, and that's, I think, an important recommendation that we make, is that if this dashboard and these indicators are not integrated in policymaking and communication strategies and in consultation processes with civil society, then that's experience we've seen so far, then this agenda is not picked up. So it has to be embedded in the policy processes such as budgetary decision making, such as, you know, the green budgets or gender budget and things of the sort. So those are the recommendations, some of the recommendations we're making for national governments. Next slide, please. Of course, I mean, this is a un.

This is a UN initiative, so we cannot not say something to the un. And we believe that the UN should start next year actually publishing immediately a report and then annually a report on progress beyond GDP using our dashboard and perhaps our headline indicator, so we can judge trends on what, you know, in well being, on what's happening in countries, but also at the global level on a comparative way. We also think that the UN should establish a dedicated mechanism to support countries, and in particular in capacity building, working with other international organizations by creating, for instance, also a fund like they was done for the. For the SDGs. And importantly, for instance, the financial.

International financial institutions should definitely use the framework that we're proposing and the indicators to change the way they assess development, in a sense, which means that, you know, graduation, debt, sustainability and.

The financing for development should be based not only on GDP per capita or income per capita, but on a wider measure of well being in the sense that we will have defined it in our report. This should change the conversation about financing for development, for instance, and stop using GDP per capita as the only compass for this approach. Finally, let me finish with a recommendation, next slide, please. That we make for the statistical community, I should say, at the outset having been part of the statistical community, that statistical community really done a great job, frankly. Statisticians in countries at the international level and all the stakeholders working on data and statistics have been at the forefront of the agenda for many years already, before even the SDGs when there were the MDGs and then the SDGs.

And so if one community has to be really congratulated for the work they've done so far, on this agenda is a statistical community that has advanced the agenda much faster than the political community that unfortunately has not taken up and has not been as fast in embracing this agenda. So we should give ourselves some kudos for that. But nevertheless, there's still more work to be done, of course, and as we'll have seen from the heard from Nora and from Guy and from Natalie, there are areas that still require to fast track some statistical methods because there are data gaps and we need to the statistical community will be called upon to fill in those gaps in areas of subjective well being, on better measures of capitals and other aspects. There is also, as Nora said, the fact that this is a starting point, but regularly there will be a need to update, refine those indicators as the social demands demand changes over time or as you know, things happen. And this is why we think it will be important to set a process, set up a process so that such as the inter agency and expert group on the SDGs that can validate and assess the validity and go beyond what exists, but also make sure that through, through the custodian agencies and through groups that can improve on what exists already.

The third point is that of course we like any other, we will need to rely on other data sources and we will need to avail of innovations such as AI, but other sources and other innovations like using of mobile phones or geospatial information, which is already the case by the way. So there's nothing new, but perhaps even more so in the future to fill in some of the gaps. Citizen generated data also will have to be called upon because if you want to have disaggregated inter, you know, sectional data to measure deprivations and inequalities across different dimensions, those data will have to be to be used as well. So investing on those data innovation and technologies is something which I know the statistical community, I know that on Friday you discussed AI already and how to use AI in the production of statistics. But we need as a group to reinforce and help you and make this message get across so that what you're doing is actually, you know, considered and actually recognized.

So we'll have this recommendation and hopefully that will be helpful to statistical community. And finally, you know, what about the SNA in all this? Because we're going beyond gdp and of course at the heart of the SNA is the gdp. We know that there's not just GDP in the SNA and you'll hear that from the, in the next session. And so we believe that the SNA through the 2025 update has done a great deal already in recognizing that the need to go beyond GDP through including well being, material well being and the environment in the national accounts.

Nevertheless, we believe that there will be more work to be done and the SNA will not be implemented quickly enough to respond to what we are proposing because it takes time, unfortunately. So we call on the SNA people in the SNA process to be inclusive and making sure that the countries already that have now that the 2025 has been adopted, that there is capacity building to help countries implement the 2025 SNA and eventually go beyond even as demand occurs. And as Nora said, we're also proposing in the same vein, something perhaps a little bit more ambitious and whether it's for the SNA or for others to take on board or with the help of other international organizations, statistical offices, to establish a truly wealth accounting framework that would really help designing this broader headline indicator where you could put a price, a shadow price on the environment, but also other capital so that at the end you would have a fully well determined accounting framework for the entire source of capitals, not just the environment. But this is certainly for the longer term. So let me just end by saying that as was said already by many of the speakers that we count, the HLG group counts really on this statistical community at the national level, but also at the international level and of course is in a sense giving a a mandate to the Statistical Commission to actually implement the very ambitious agenda that we've put forward, not for tomorrow, as Nora said, but having a timetable so that we can still produce a report in 2027, but improve on that for the years ahead.

And so we can make a difference and improve the lives of people. Thank you very much.

Thank you Martin and Nora for this very interesting presentation and all the remarks. I have to look a bit on my clock, it's already three minutes past four, so maybe I'm sure you have a lot of questions, but I can allow only one or two questions. But I'm quite sure that Martin and also Nora are also later on here to answer your question or you can write her email. Is there Any question in the room from the audience that you want to raise right now, I see someone really at the back of the. Yes, in the blue suit.

Thank you so much. My name is Livia Bizikova. I am with the International Institute for Sustainable Development. Thank you for a very insightful presentation about the progress with the working group and it's very exciting to see the dashboard indicators and that the results will be published soon. My question is related to the role of the country.

So as both of you really nicely outlined the role of international agencies, you know, UN publishing a regular report, custodian agencies also, and we also seeing these, that many statistics are statistical offices collect many of the indicators that might be in the dashboard. So in your role, what is the role of the countries, like where they should, what they should be starting doing Once these processes, you know, the results are published and the indicators are available, should they be rather focusing, then their role should be on the integration in the decision making or planning processes or looking at governance processes. Have you changed the governance? So these well being indicators will be now up there where GDP is or where should they start to complement the UN process. Thank you.

Martin or Nora, have you heard the question? Yeah, I think. Martin. Martin. Okay.

Well, of course the role of the, of the national statistical offices is of course key in this. We focused on the, on the international community because you are there gathered in New York as a statistical community.

You know, we say that the government, governments in our. One of the recommendations is our governments, those that have not done so because a number of countries have already developed, actually many countries. I mean, if I look at the OECD, almost 70% of the OECD countries have already designed and established some well being framework frameworks that are, you know, for their own countries and they have developed the indicators for those. The point is that then in that case, when the framework already exists and when the indicators already exist, if they are aligned with what we are proposing, then of course the emphasis should be on making sure that this is being used really by governance and doing all they can to ensure that there is an uptake by policymakers. But it's not the case for all countries.

So the first stage should be for those countries that where such frameworks do not exist, that they do implement a wellbeing framework in a way that we are proposing with the limited indicator, the 30 or less indicators that is on our dashboard and develop this dashboard and work in consultation with other stakeholders and then of course do advocacy as much as possible. But Nora, maybe you want to compliment

thank you very much. I really have to look, I don't want to cut off the time for the other two sessions. So therefore thank you very much the panelists for a rich discussion and to all of you for question and engagement.

We still go on with the next two sessions and you will have the possibility there also to reflect and ask questions. This session showed the opportunity of moving beyond GDP towards more comprehensive measurement of progress. So I would like to invite now the speakers for the next session to please take their seats on the podium. It's my pleasure also to pass the moderation to Gracielia Marquez Gracella. Please take the floor.

Thank you very much.

Good afternoon.

I welcome you all to the second part of the High Level Forum on Official of Unofficial Statistics over the years, the Statistical Commission has excelled in contributing to methodological developments across a wide range of topics and has played a crucial role in setting global standards for statistical work. In the past three years, for example, the Friends of the Chair Group on Social and Demographic Statistics has developed an overarching system framework for measuring societies, an integrated people centered statistical architecture that organizes population and social information in a comparable, integrated and sustainable way. This framework is also designed to align the Social pillar with the ESNA and the sia, thereby creating a comprehensive statistical ecosystem for a global initiative such as beyond gdp. The experience of the statistical community will be essential in strengthening the scope and methodologies proposed by the High Level expert Group. Likewise, the groups working under those pieces of the Statistical Commission through knowledge exchange and capacity building are well positioned to support national statistical offices and national statistical systems in responding to emerging information needs.

A total of 43 groups currently operate under the Commission 12 expert groups, 8 working groups, 2 task forces, 8 city groups, 2 interagency and expert groups, 8 committees, 1 friends of the chair group and 2 networks. Networks most focus on issues of global relevance. Therefore, the Beyond GDP agenda must ensure careful alignment with other global initiatives to avoid duplication. In today's rapidly evolving data ecosystem, marked by technological change and the growing integration of non traditional data, national statistical offices and national statistics systems are adopting innovative approaches. However, these trends vary widely across the Global South.

Thus, the Beyond GDP Initiative must consider that the production of new indicators and a dashboard may require adaptation to national contexts. With no further ado, let me introduce our panelists, all of whom are High level representatives of national statistical offices and play leading roles within the Statistical Commission's group. Mr. Richard Hayes, Deputy Chief Economist at the Office of National Statistics of the United Kingdom. He co chairs the Expert Group on well being measurement Mrs. Liv Rognerut Senior Advisor at Statistics Norway. She co chairs the Interagency and Expert Group on SDG indicators.

Mr. Andre Lorenger, Chief Statistician of Canada and former Chair of the Committee of Experts on Environmental Economic Accounting and on behalf of Mr. Rizenga Malu Lek, who had some trouble getting here, Soli Molaji, active Director General for Population and Social Statistics from Statistics South Africa, will join us this afternoon. Richard, let me start with you and ask you two related questions. The Expert Group on well Being Measurement has made contributions considerable advances in developing its framework and domains. How do you see this valuable work achieved so far? Aligning with the supporting and supporting the Framework Dashboard and indicators emerging from the emerging proposals from the High Level Expert Group on Beyond gdp.

And the second question deals with how the United Kingdom has since the United States. United Kingdom has been a pioneer in embedding well being measurements into official statistics and policy processes where the most valuable lessons learned from the UK experience and other countries at different stages of statistical development can draw on as they build their own beyond GDP capabilities. And how is the Expert Group on well Being Measurement working to make this knowledge accessible globally? You have eight minutes so that we can make up time for the Q and R session. Thank you.

Thank you very much.

In the 55th and 56th session, the last two statistical commissions, we established the principles and foundations to move forward to support the work of the HLEG by establishing the Expert Group for Wellbeing Measurement, agreeing its technical mandate in terms of reference and its objectives to deliver a statistical standard which has the potential to put in place the necessary support to underpin and provide the technical foundations to maintain the support system which the HLEG is proposing. We have spent a large part of our time over the last year making sure that the work that we've been doing aligns to and supports and we've delivered aligns to the HLEG and supports them through delivering, briefing and supporting their process.

I believe that we are at a point where we, having undertaken that groundwork, are in a really strong position to take forward and deliver this work in a way that can make this vision a reality. And I think we build on some really strong foundations. Firstly, we build on a broad alignment in terms of terminology and concepts. I think we are at a juncture where whilst we know that there's been a lot of work and many endeavours in this area, the cohesion around the principles of inclusive sustainable well being that the High Level Expert Group has identified and has designed its dashboard around are very much those that we have seen in our work and in the work of predecessor bodies. And I think we're at the point that we can now closely define the statistical question that we are working towards.

Martine particularly mentioned the need for us to be able to fill in that box on the left hand side of her diagram called enablers. And I think this takes us to a really important question where we will need to define and understand the purpose for the High Level Dashboard. Is it an evaluative tool that supports countries and under understanding their progress towards achieving these goals, or is it a system with deeper foundations that allows policymakers to understand the impact of policy and to think about the design of policy and how that interrelates to achieving the nest of output indicators which the High Level Expert Group have identified?

For me this is a large question and considering it in terms of just a dashboard limits our ability to actually engage the statistical resources we already have and the data that we already produce through our existing statistical systems. And so the work we have focused on in the Expert group has been trying to think about that next level down of how we can produce a parsimonious set of enabler data which can actually tie the systems of data we already produce and draw data from those forward to allow us to understand how our system of statistics relates to and drives change in the High Level indicator set. I think Martin also talked about the system of national accounts that we ratified at this Commission last year. I doubt whether we as a body will have a desire to reopen that and to take this work into that framework. But given that we have established a mechanism through the expert Group for wellbeing measurement to establish a statistical system of broad equivalence that gives us a place to take this work without needing to reopen those things which we've already been able to deliver and move forward from within the work which I see us doing going forward.

The wealth accounting framework that Martine and Nora have just run through is very clearly to me possibly the area where as a collective we would have the most to do. And I think Martin was also pointing in that direction, particularly around shadow pricing. I think that is an area where we probably don't even have a complete agreement on the definition of different types of shadow price for different purposes. And I know in the UK that is one of the areas that we've been working to undertake research to understand what exactly shadow prices involve and how we could develop and move those forward. And I think particularly Andre will be talking about this from the SIA perspective and the considerations in relation to environmental assets where Shadow pricing is probably going to be most distinct, distinct from market pricing.

That's an area that we will benefit from working together on. In terms of your second question, in terms of what the UK has learned from its journey, we are on our third iteration of our well being dashboard. We had our first in 2011, we had a large national consultation in 2023 and earlier this year we have slightly updated that. We have found consistent pressure from user groups and stakeholder groups to increase the number of metrics on our high level dashboard which grew from 44 to 60 metrics in 2023. We find that big is not always better in this regard.

We have found particularly synthesizing a narrative and a clear storyline for policymakers out of that level and range of data is particularly difficult and it's particularly difficult when data comes with different periodicities and different time lags.

The steps that we have taken this year have been to ensure that our smallest dashboard, our seven measure dashboard, which broadly aligns to the eight areas that the HLEG have now put forward, are all deliverable on a quarterly basis and that has improved our ability to make that narrative work. I'd probably conclude by saying that one of the things we will need to consider as we move this agenda forward is keeping up with the latest developments. In terms of the science, I see very good researchers developing new thoughts around subjective well being and tackling age old problems like the Easterlyn paradox. And moving that forward, I see a need for us to continue to think about how digital impacts on well being and that I think in an AI age is one that we will have have to think about in terms of metrics that probably do not exist today. And particularly if we are to focus on the measurement of capital, we will need to ultimately identify what we want to create that data.

For in the UK we have been looking at developing inclusive income and wealth accounts to try and understand the goods and services that emerge from all types of assets. And I'm the chair of an expert group on well being measurement, so I'm not afraid to take on a bit of a challenge. But I would say that that remains probably one of the most significant things that we will have to think about in the coming years. Thank you.

Thank you very much not only for your answers, but to stick to the time your perspectives from the work you have been doing is essential for addressing issues on the Beyond GDP agenda. Let me now move to leave with two questions. The Interagency Expert Group on SDG syndicators benefits from an intergovernmental model led by the national statistical Offices and anchored in intergovernmental consensus that gives it a distinctive credibility. What lessons could you be drawn from this model to bring new beyond GDP metrics into the heart of the official national statistics? That's one first question.

And the second SDG GDP monitoring has generated valuable lessons about where data gaps persist, particularly in dimensions central to the Beyond GDP agenda, such as natural capital and distributional equity. How can the development of beyond GDP metrics be an opportunity to close these gaps and strengthen statistical capacity in developing countries? And what could be done to help streamline and consolidate reporting for national statistical offices, making these metrics not only ambitious but genuinely implementable for all? Thank you.

Thank you Graciela, and thanks for bringing the IAG SDG's view into this discussion. It comes timely in the sense that we are currently taking stage Step back looking at how the Global SDG Indicator Framework was developed and implemented. So in many ways the IIG SDGs acted and is still acting as the engine room of global SDG measurement, turning political commitments into measurable and statistical sound indicators. The Group was or still is responsible not only for developing the Global Indicator Framework but also for refining it, reviewing methodologies, harmonizing definitions and supporting implementation over time. So 27 member states are represented by their NSOs in the IAG.

This is rotating over the years and we are supported by regional commissions, custodian agencies and observers. This has ensured a regional balance with a good mix of national ownership and international expertise. And then the Statistical Commission plays a central role in providing feedback, endorsing the indicator itself, approving the major reviews we have had, and supporting the annual refinements, etc. So altogether this forms a kind of an end to end governance model for the Indicator framework developed through an intergovernmental process. I would like to point out a few of the takeaways that has come out of a task team for lessons learned set up under the IAG SDGs after the Commission last year.

So hopefully this undertaking can provide the reference point when looking at possible models moving forward also for the beyond gdp. So the Task team is working in two phases where phase one that just concluded with the background document to the Commission this year under item 3k, looked at how the Global Indicator Framework was designed and implemented from target design to governance and coordination and to practical reporting experiences. And then in phase two which will be running through 2026 and report in 2027, the focus on regional, thematic and country level experience will be reported and input for these processes is collected from the Member States, from CUSTODIAN agencies, the regional commissions, but also civil society and other stakeholders who has been very active in our IAG SDGS meetings. So the first takeaway I want to highlight is that national ownership works best when it's deliberately built into the framework. Experience has been that the system functioned far better once the national statistical offices had a clear formal role through the IAG SDGs and the work was anchored in an intergovernmental setting.

It created a shared reference point and strengthened both credibility and long term sustainability. A key argument using a model like this is that the NSO leadership ensures that new metrics are grounded in what is actually measurable rather than aspirational constructs somewhat disconnected from national capacity. Second is that early dialogue between policymakers and statisticians reduces later complexity. Several of the SDG targets were difficult to measure because statistical considerations entered relatively late in the process, leading to targets that were either too broad or not so easily translated into indicators. So a closer and earlier conversation between the statisticians and policymakers could help ensure that metrics are both meaningful and feasible to implement.

And third is that the clear process and transparent role make collaboration smoother. The open and inclusive Design of the IIG SDGs helped building trust across a diverse global community and coordination improved as procedures became clearer over time. And the last recommendation I will present here for you is that a focused set of indicators can help change both quality and feasibility. The experience has been that the large global indicator set place heavy demands on countries and here I talk across the globe if the ambition is to report on all indicators and their disaggregation, so a more streamlined cork could be preferable and I think we heard a bit about this in the first session. For example, a concise set of mature indicators with flexibility for national adaptation may help balance global comparability with practical feasibility.

So it's also worth noting that several well established, methodologically mature and data rich SDG indicators, particularly those relating to inequality, environmental sustainability and institutional performance, already reflected dimensions central to the Beyond GDP discussions. So building on these could enhance coherence while reducing duplication reporting burdens. So I'm very happy to see that already approximately half of this set that was presented to us earlier is based on the SDG indicators. So already here we have a basis for a possible collaboration going forward. Turning to the capacity question, I would say first focus where it matters most.

Targeting capacity strengthening for national statistical offices and systems is likely to have the greatest impact. We see persistent data gaps remain in several areas, but the beyond GDP discussion could also offer an opportunity to focus capacity building efforts in supporting targeted gap filling strategies for the area, as you mentioned, but here I think Andrea and Richard is better placed to say something specifically about the topics. I would emphasize that this could may be obvious, but support statistical systems development over single indicator developments as this pays better off in the long run and serves a wider range of purposes for the statistics and its users. And then look at how roles and resourcing can be aligned. NSO's responsibility expanded during the first first SDG decade with coordination and stewardship roles, while resources did not always keep pace.

So to enable implementation NSOs need to be supported with appropriate mandates, adequate human and financial resources and modern infrastructures. And this I also think Martin alluded to in her presentation regarding streamlining and consolidating reporting. The task team on lessons learned pointed to country centric central data flows at this strengthened trust and statistical consistency. So the experience from a country's perspective is that fragmented requests and uneven validation of model data strain capacity and can potentially also undermine the confidence between the actors. So aim for systematic country validation and clearer predictable data flows across statistical domains.

We would also advise making reporting workable by aligning with existing frameworks and the broader SDG indicator architecture. Common standards are something we talk about at many fronts, so harmonizing definition and data standards enable interoperable data and metadata systems. For instance, shared tools, coordinated platforms and clear guidance could help reduce duplication and reporting burden. And based on the IG SDG's experience starting with the readily available the Tier 1 metrics as we call them could be smart while building capacity for the more complex ones. So we hope these are some practical guidance for integrating beyond GDP into official statistics.

Based on the experience we from working with the SDG syndicator and that is from how the governance is working to methodology and capacity lessons. So just to repeat a bit of what I said is that strong national ownership, early dialogue and methodological grounded processes will make it easier easier to achieve sustainable implementation across the countries over time. Thank you.

Thank you very much. I thank Lee for her through response which will enrich certainly our conversation today and in the near future.

And she also stick precisely to the time. So two out of four we'll see. Andre so now it's time to turn to Andre. I have two questions for you as well. Since at least Agenda 21 in 1992, the statistical community has made major advances in developing a framework consistent with the system of national accounts to more fully covered capture environmental sustainability, environmental degradation and more generally the contributions of the environment to the economy and the impacts of the economy on the environment.

This work culminated in the recognition of the sea a central framework and the sea ecosystem accounting as an international statistical standards in 2012 and 2021 restricted in your view, how can this body of work contribute to the development of the Beyond GDP metrics? And the second question goes like this. Countries around the world are making important strides in developing integrated environmental economic data and momentum is growing to strengthen statistical capacity, especially in developing regions. How can we best built on this positive progress to further expand the availability and use of the SIA based accounts globally, ensuring that all countries are empowered to contribute fully and effectively to the Beyond GDP agenda? Your turn.

Okay, thank you Graciela, and I'll do my best to stick to time. No guarantees, but I'll do my best. I also want to thank you for the opportunity to be on the panel. I should mention that I'm a last minute substitute on this panel. Ms. Pdad Urdinola from Colombia who co chairs the UNC was unable to attend and as a former chair of the sia, I was glad to help out.

Step in to offer some thoughts on Natural Capital Account accounting and the Beyond GDP dialogue. The SIA Central Framework and the SIA Ecosystem Accounting Standards provide a coherent and integrated and internationally comparable set of information for the derivation of many key indicators that touch on well being and sustainability issues. Making the link between the economy and the environment is critically important. The SIA brings environmental and economic information together using concepts aligned with the system of national accounts, allowing us to put a value on natural capital, including pricing, which is something that Richard alluded to a minute ago. This helps us understand what lies behind economic growth, whether it's supported by sustainable use of natural resources or driven by their depleties.

Without this integration, full environmental impacts remain invisible in economic statistics. So the SIA enables mainstreaming of environmental issues into economic policy by using the same accounting language that is familiar to finance and planning ministries. It supports evidence based decisions on green growth, fiscal policy and long term investment. To to mention a few. Mainstreaming environmental issues in economic policy and decision making is important and remains an important priority.

I've been involved with the UN Committee of Experts on Environmental Accounting on and off for several years and certainly in my time in the group, mainstreaming was always a major consideration. Great strides have been made, but explicit links to CEO derived indicators in other initiatives such as the G20 Data Gaps Initiative, the Global Biodiversity Framework, for example, and of course Beyond GDP is critical. The indicators exist and let's use them. They will help reveal trade offs and synergies between economic development and environmental sustainability, giving policymakers a clearer picture of whether progress is occurring within ecological limits. GDP and established macroeconomic frameworks such as the SNA is foundational, but we do need to go further to address issues of well being, equality and climate change.

Looking ahead where the UN SIA fits in, Further integration of the SIA central framework and the SIA environmental or ecosystem accounts standards is is really and other key macroeconomic standards like the SNA and the gfs, for example, will help position economic accounting to produce relevant indicators that consider environmental issues in a consistent and coherent way. Using a very tangible example. If we think about SIA derived indicators and how they're included in Canada's quality of life framework, our own well being or beyond giving gdp, if you will, we consider things like the marine ecosystem, greenhouse gas emissions and natural capital.

We're already looking beyond GDP and our framework is embedded in Canadian policymaking. Having metrics and indicators related to the environment derived from SIA has a great advantage of ensuring coherence, comparability and robustness. A final point perhaps in my mind there's no ambiguity of how the SIA based indicators can inform the Beyond GDP dialogue. That said, we need to reflect on agility and that dialogue is happening now, and on the simplicity of message and indicators that are outcome focused but measurable. So moving on to your second question, which is really about how best we can build on the global progress and momentum.

One of the work streams of the UNC is coordination and communication and as part of that work, all the work related to environmental accounting was mapped out across the statistical ecosystem to enable linkages and connections between initiatives and organizations, organizations. And I think this work is vital. We should be looking to bring frameworks closer together and making connections explicit and taking advantage of existing structures. As my neighbor here mentioned a while ago in the dialogue related to the SDGs, it's also a very contested space and I'm going to plug the network of economic statisticians here because I'm a big part of that organization as well. We did a net zero sprint not too long ago and produced a net zero storybook developed as part of the UN as part of again the network.

And what that work showed us was that there's a multitude of international groups, frameworks and indicators, indicators and synthesizing these outputs to complement GDP is getting very, very difficult. I just got the signal that I'm about to be yanked off the stage, so I'll go quickly. I think as we move forward, we need to take advantage of the progress that's been made with respect to country implementation across the board on sia. Every year the UNC measures progress and we're seeing sort of increases over time and we need to take advantage of that work and again make linkages to other frameworks. And I'll make a final point.

It's really about communicating to non expert and non technical office audiences. I think as statisticians we tend to focus on communication, our communication on explaining rigor and the quality of the statistics that we produce, which is something that we absolutely need to do. We need to be transparent about the quality of our methods. It's foundational to our work and we really want to mainstream SIA based accounts and bring civil society into the dialogue. But we need more sophisticated communication tools that that speak to non expert audiences in simple terms clearly explaining why this work is important and how it fits into the broader well being.

So I'll stop there. Thank you.

Thank you very much for your insights and to bring to this conversation the work that the network of economic statisticians have already achieved. Now.

I move or I ask Suli to share with us his thoughts on the following questions. Integration of non traditional data and technological innovations are essential to advance the Beyond GDP agenda and support the NSOS in implementing its metrics. Given the Committee of Experts on Big Data recent strategic focus on artificial intelligence readiness and collaborative data innovation, how can national statistical offices practically leverage new data sources and AI too? As the high level expert group submits make the invisible visible and give a voice to the voiceless on domains such as environmental degradation, unpaid care work or local inequalities that traditionally economic accounting methods struggle to capture. And the second question is that in your position as a member of the South Africa as a statistician in South Africa and a collaborator of the College Committee of Experts on Big Data, you possess a deep understanding of the resource constraints facing statistical systems in the Global South.

The Committee of Experts on Big Data is moving towards a federated model to empower regional hubs to lead the data science and capacity building. How can we ensure that developing nations are not left behind by the digital dividend and have the necessary technological infrastructure and data science capabilities to independently compile the Beyond GDP indicators. Thank you very much. And you have eight minutes. Three of we have a perfect record here.

Thank you so much. I think as a statistician I will try to answer the questions the first one in four minutes and the next one the four minutes mark. Thank you so much. Making the invisible visible. I Think that's the essence of the question.

Let me answer it this way. Chair for Africa Beyond GDP is not a theoretical exercise. It's about finally counting what always being important. And here we're referring to unpaid care workers. We're talking about informal, informal economies that carries a lot of communities in the continent.

For too long our statistics have told an incomplete story. And this is not about data gaps. These are gaps on how value human lives. So how are we going to make invisible visible the new data sources? The AI gave us powerful tools to close this.

I'm referring to your satellite images, your geospatial, your mobile data that can actually reveal services inequality at the national averages and also at the lower levels. You know, the citizen generated data can illuminate informal realities that traditional accounts have long ignored. However, colleagues, here's the key way it all of these need to be practical. For NSO to leverage this innovation is not about replacing traditional statistics. I think we've heard about this earlier, but it's about augmenting and integrating them.

But tools without foundation deliver nothing. And this is where my colleagues from African center of Africa statistics from unequa, they're playing a critical role to ensure that at the continent level the harmonization, the methodological development and capacity building across the African national statistical system it's adhered to as a serious effort to advance beyond GDP in Africa. This is the only way we can able to strengthen the system. South Africa is a chair of the committee of expert of Big Data and Data Science of for official statistics I can confirm that the AI readiness is a strategic priority. But readiness, what does it mean?

It means skills, governance and trust is not just technology. The expertise of esthetician, the integrity of our methodology, the public confidence in our institution remain the bedrock. If not this innovation will not make invisible visible in actual fact, it will make injustice invisible.

Earlier my panel speaker here spoke about ownership. Indeed it's true African ownership is key in terms of methodology, data and agenda. And I think this is an opportunity before us to ensure that the data revolution is inclusive. That means south to south cooperation. Genuine investment in Africa capacity is the way to go.

The second question Madam Chair, you were asking about how are we going to ensure that no one is left behind? Let me be direct about this one. We need to be deliberate about this. The beyond GDP agenda risk is. It's.

It's got a risk to widen the very inequality that we seek to measure. And this is the paradox that we must confront. It is the risk that the committee that is taking serious and that Is why as a committee is moving towards the federal model, the regional hubs that bring capacity very close to where the challenges are For Africa, this is not just a logistical smart, it is a continent imperative. Africa must not simply receive the agenda, but must help it. Let me give an example.

The UN general hubs for big data are already proven efficiency in this approach. Just to mention the few in Rwanda we're talking about the data science champion network has already been established focusing on the AI application at the NSO to support the AU Agenda 2063. On the question of the digital divide, sequencing is matters. What do I mean by this? We cannot deploy advanced AI system into NSO that are still managing basic infrastructure gaps.

What developing countries needs first a strong foundation referring to reliable data storage, you know, strong administration system, sustainable computing environment. And what is quite interesting, what is quite important is that this will be built on it to make sure that the data science application can grow realistically. So, Madam Chair, in my conclusion I want to say that beyond gender, beyond GDP is not only meaningful for every country can independently produce and interpret. That is the standard that we must all uphold to better data leads to better decision. A better decision grounded in the full reality of people's lives.

Ultimately, what beyond GDP is all about, beyond GDP is our chance to finally tell the full story. I submit.

Thank you. Thank you very much.

You have highlighted key elements for facing the challenges of the data revolution in the global South. And I think it complements we have heard on the progress made in other areas. So there are clear challenges on the one hand and on the other clear progress on the other. So because of the well behaved panelists, we do have time for questions and a good 25 minutes or so to listen to your questions and to listen the answers that the panelists may have and perhaps if time permits, some concluding remarks by each of the panelists. So I see.

Okay, over there, the gentleman, if you could introduce yourselves because we don't have any. Yes, this is Pedro Linus from the Argentina Statistical Office. Thank you very much for the very interesting discussion and I have a question for Richard. I understand that it's no longer a

term, it's a longer term consideration. But Martin Duran noted that there are plans to explore how we might measure other forms of capital such as the social and institutional capital, potentially using opportunity cost approaches or shadow prices.

In that context, we should also consider revising and further clarifying the concept of social product within the within beyond the GDP agenda. Because this term social product was very common among ethnodox Economists and sociologists, this is the question. Thank you.

I think I'll take three questions and then I'll give the opportunity to answer over there.

Yes, thank you. Yes, thank you. To all the speakers. I'm Jess and Karnashon from UN Women. Just particularly on the point made by Soli, I will not repeat your points, but basically just fully agreeing in terms of the essence of the point on

making the visible and invisible, but just trying to marry that argument that has been proposed here vis a vis the proposals in the earlier presentation, wherein of course, when I heard, in terms of disaggregation, gender and as long, as well as other disaggregations are merely conditional and I think not only for gender, but the rest of the other social disaggregations, I think this should be a minimum standard and not just a conditional or conditional conditionality that can be. That can be addressed or not that it should be a design principle in and of itself. And then secondly, just also still on

the point made by Solly on all the unpaid care and domestic unpaid care, work, et cetera, that has not always been measured. I think it also somehow, there's somehow contradiction as well in the earlier presentation wherein there was a big slide on beyond income, beyond averages, beyond.

But when we immediately talk about beyond income, it's already an economic infrastructure. It's not beyond production that we are talking about, it's minimizing it to just income, income perspective alone. Thank you.

Thank you, please.

Italy NATIONAL STATISTICAL INSTITUTE well, thank you very much for providing us this very complete preacher. We have understood that the vision is clear, the conceptual framework is clear, but the measurement framework is not yet complete, as Richard said. So I was just wondering what would be our next step as a statistical community? Because if you want to make the invisible visible, then first we have to make them measurable. What we do in our country, we run a survey on the omelets.

Okay. And the way you approach the omelettes, the data collection technique is clear. I saw in one of the previous, in one of the previous presentation that one of the indicator is people about human rights, is people reporting about an abuse. This is crucial in terms of data measurement. Who they are reporting to, Are they reporting to the police?

This means that this is a very, very, you know, democratic society, because in most cases, those people, they don't report at all. So we have to find the right way to capture this data. So my question is that we are looking forward for the final report from the high level group. We will be very very committed to further work in this area. I think that we have to consider the different level of maturity.

Some topics are at the frontier and we have to learn from each other. Thank you. Thank you. We have three very interesting and thoughtful questions. So I think we're ready to answer them.

May I start with you, Richard?

Certainly. Thank you very much, Pedro, for a very good question. I think, I think I would agree that before we can get into the depths of a measurement of capital's framework, we will need to do work to agree the definitions of the different capitals. Is social capital a standalone capital?

Is it a fraction of human capital? Is it, as Parfa Dasgupta describes it, a contextualizing factor that affects the value of other capitals? I think those foundational questions obviously will take us a while to get to. And I see in the proposal that we've made to the commission, which we will table later this week, we propose that we should be thinking about at least a version one and a version two of our documents documentation where we score the quick wins in version one. And we come to some of those latter questions with a little bit more space and time for us to make sure we're getting it right in as feasible as way as we can.

And I think, particularly thinking, as I think Stefano's just mentioned, the way we think about collecting some of this data will be absolutely vital to ensure that we end up with consistency across the reports which are drawn together in the UN synthesizing reports. So thinking about crime surveys of crime or police recorded crime numbers, we know there are differences between those and thinking about those systematically and what they mean before we are simply compiling data is going to be very, very important. Thank you.

There was a direct questions to Soli and then I'll give the floor to both Andre and Liv Soli. Thank you so much, Jasmine, for the question. I fully agree with you. If we are going to be serious about this and we want to tell everyone a full story, we really need to make sure that we are having those minimum standards.

And as I already said that this is an opportunity for us to tell a full story. And how are we going to tell the story depending on us. And the third question that came through, there's a part that I liked about the question. When you say we need to learn from each other. We are saying from the Global south that we really need to be part of the the discussion let be part of.

We need to be in the room as we are discussing this similarly with taking to account the marginalized groups. We need to make sure. That in our indicators it shouldn't be a afterthought. It should be a part and parcel of our discussion and also in terms of putting together beyond the GDP numbers. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Andre.

I think I'll just piggyback a little bit on what Richard was saying. I think if we look at sort of the five capitals and sort of having to build estimates around, of course we've got produced capital, very well defined financial capital as well. It gets really tricky when you start to think about measuring human capital. And then even trickier, I think, when you start to measure social capital and what that means. I think the intersection of the capitals, I think is a really interesting question as well.

If we think about natural capital on the environmental side, valuation is also really tricky, particularly when we think about ecosystem accounting and the value that we put put on ecosystem accounts, we can certainly measure the extent quite well. And you can do that sort of with a lot of different techniques over time. You can look at sort of how a particular ecosystem or a watershed is growing or not or shrinking. You can look at sort of the land mass and then sort of how cities are encroaching on agricultural land, for example. Those things are easy to do.

Putting a value on that is where it gets tricky. But I firmly believe that eventually the science will get there and we'll figure it out, but it will take time and that's, I think, where we need to focus as statistical organizations. Thank you.

Given what you mentioned in your presentation, Liv, I think it's important for you to share with us what are your talks, your thoughts regarding on what are the mechanisms that could ensure the methodological development and implementation support, given the experience on the SDG framework. Thank you. And I think I will address the comment from Italy in the same response with the measurement framework. This is going to be now in the statistical Commission. I think it's important that we build on the intergovernmental processes we already established so well with the IAG SDGs.

And there we already have the collaboration between the countries and the custodian agencies and lot of expert communities with the stakeholders and representatives from civil society who can help us addressing these difficult measurement issues that you point to. So I think this is the answer to it. We have to continue this intergovernmental way of working with it if we're going to have a national ownership of the process. Thank you. Certainly I don't see any other question.

Come on, guys, we made the effort over there.

I'm just wondering because we had the examples from the uk, the Canadian example, and also from Norway, but also from other countries. I'm sorry, my name is Livia Bizikova, I'm with the isd. I'm wondering, can you basically share some examples on how these indicators were using those budgetary processes in decision making processes when beyond like the, you know, the strong focus on income, you also look at well being and other aspects that will come from the beyond GDP efforts to kind of be inspirational for the countries. Thank you. Thank you.

Any other, any other question? Okay, what? Yes, can you hear me? Yes, I'm Romina Barini from the oecd. I think it's a comment to the previous actually sessions, but then also a

question to the speakers. What do you think about the importance of reading, you know, the indicators in relationship to each other? What I mean is that one of the challenge sometimes is that dashboards come as, you know, a list of things

all which of course are important to monitor but not necessarily sort of for themselves or in themselves. I think actually the story, especially from a policy perspective perspective comes when you start looking at the different sort of the evolution of the indicators again in relationship to each other. So it's a question, I think specifically

to Richard because I was curious whether this is for instance one of the way you chose to streamline the number of indicators in your dashboard, well being dashboard, but it's also open to others. So what is your experiences kind of looking at again this as I said,

system, not just as a sort of a list of indicators. Thank you.

Thank you. Shall we start with you, Andre?

Sure. I'll have a crack at answering the first question and sort of how those measures are actually built into policy making. So in Canada, our quality of life framework was built, built for that purpose. We worked very closely with our Department of Finance and our treasury to come up with measures where we could assess policy initiatives as they go through the budget process. And as you submit a budget proposal for a federal budget in Canada, there are certain templates and sort of explanations that you have to provide to policymakers.

And so there's elements of our quality of life framework and indicators that are built into that process. For example, on a given proposal, departments are required to sort of address environmental issues that are built into to our framework. They're also sort of, they're also sort of required to answer on various prosperity issues and so on. So that's the way we're using it in Canada. Is it perfect?

I think there's still a lot of work to be done, but it is a Tangible example of how the government is trying to sort of bring in these different angles angles to a policy decision to make sure that as they make a decision it's not made just from one perspective.

Richard

I'll tackle the second question first from Romina. I think bringing the measures together is very, very important and we need to work not just on the measures but also on the narrative we build amongst them. So within our set we don't use household disposable income, we use GDP per head, which helps us bridge to the stories about GDP that you see in the media. Now, in circumstances where GDP per head has increased but greenhouse gas emissions per head have decreased, are there labels and phrases that we can begin to develop which are media friendly? Would that scenario be sustainable economic growth?

The sorts of terms that we could begin to get some media traction around? I think we need to think about this not just in terms of developing metrics, but also developing narratives that help us sell this into policy making and, and common usage. I think there's a lot that we could do there to help make this data set. Not a list of 20 or 30 metrics, but something which actually gives us that media narrative. In terms of the first question around the use in policy and budget setting, I think the lesson I've learned here from the work we've done looking around the world is it's really, really important that as a community, as Andre says, that we own this.

Instances where one political party has shaped the wellbeing dashboard to feature the policy initiatives that they think are most important do not get supported by other parties and it becomes a very one sided conversation where effectively the wellbeing method metrics get locked out because the opposition political parties don't want to engage with that as a measurement metric. And so I think for us, identifying how we retain that control and keep them as politically neutral as we can is one of the great advantages that the high level expert group gives us by that international consistency and that vantage point of then coming from outside domestic, domestic political debate. Thank you. Thank you very much. I think the stories from other places are not as successful as the Canadian or the British experiences.

I can tell briefly what is happening in Mexico. It's certainly not a time to the budget, but what I can say is that at least there are awareness of certain topics that otherwise will not be of interest of politicians. So for instance, the environment. The environment has had much more attention since the SDGs than before and perhaps it doesn't have more budget and it still lacks a lot of budget, but not the attention from not only politicians, but also from the academic sector and other NGOs. So perhaps we are not yet there in terms of the budget.

But it's a starting point, a very important starting point that it's closer to have budget rather than not and is less. It's like a neutral conversation. Nobody will go against policies directed towards improving the indicators shown by the SDGs. So there is different approaches and different progress. But I think overall it's well received in different societies, regardless the level of development.

Any other questions? Question? Oh, please. Sorry, I took my. I'm just tempted to comment on it because looking back 20 years in Norway we had 17 sustainability indicators, heavily inspired by the Brundtland Commission.

Naturally it was abandoned around 2014 in. In the expectation of what came with the SDGs. And then maybe the SDGs became a bit too comprehensive to kind of implement in that sense in the country. But currently they're working on the life of quality strategy in Norway and the Minister of Climate published a green book together with the national budget every year. So I think, I mean, lots of metrics are used throughout the process in the budget planning, but maybe not so explicit as being beyond GDP or that kind of framework.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Solely, did you want to join to this point? Yes, maybe. Let me just. I think the point is that we are all in the different stages, NSOs and countries, and I think the true measure of how successful we are going to implement the beyond gdp, it's a how collectively we're going to work together from the global south and the global north, because we could actually learn from each other that those who are already implementing these indicators and embedded them in their programs and in the budgets and those who are still in the discussion and in awareness. So I think collectively this is going to be a true measure of how we're going to actually implement the beyond gdp.

Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. A final round of questions before moving to the closing part of the conference.

No, really.

Okay. We have three minutes for. Seven minutes for coffee. Thank you very much.

So it would be a short sort of summary, right? 40 minutes. Yeah. Okay. And you have your questions.

Be brief. You don't mind. Sorry, I'll be brief. That's fine. You saved seven minutes.

So we need to learn from you.

But it worked. It did, it did. Colleagues, please, can we get seated?

The tones were so complimentary to each other. It was very nice. I also like your pointed out how many working groups there actually are.

Hi, George. Good, how are you? It Must be tiring right even before the start.

Can we please get seated for the last session? Please?

Okay, colleagues, we are set for the last session.

We have all panelists seated, Those behind the room having bilateral discussions. May I kindly ask you to get seated?

Thank you very much, colleagues. My name is Samoa Kobnenim, the Director for the Africa center for Statistics at the Economic Commission for Africa. And it's my greatest pleasure to moderate the last session for the day, which is the closing session for the Beyond GDP Rethinking Progress in a Changing World. This session has been preceded by three very instructive sessions. We started the day with presentations from the Under Secretary General who walked us through the mandate and the expectations for the Beyond GDP movement.

We got our keynote speaker, beyond labor, who spoke to us about the expectations, especially from the youth perspective. And we had two very engaging panel discussions, one that led us through what has been done so far with regards the Beyond GDP proposal and the immediate past session that gave us a sense of what the Statistical Commission ought to do going forward. This session has been themed Stock Taking and the Way Forward. And we have four panelists that we all know they hold very distinctive leadership roles. So they're going to share with us their thoughts on the way forward, reflecting on some of the issues that have come up generically.

The first issue they're going to talk about is related to collective ownership. And here what we mean by collective ownership is not only us as a statistical community, but as we heard from the Under Secretary General, the perspective of the policy should also be heard as well. And also as we heard from Natalie, the keynote speaker, the voices of the voiceless should also be heard. Also, it was indicated earlier that this process has been multidisciplinary. So going forward into the implementation and the various revisions, we also need to think about how to uphold the multidisciplinary perspective of the Beyond GDP conversation.

The second speaker would also walk us through the operational feasibility of this, focusing on synergies across different agencies. And the third speaker would walk us through how the Beyond GDP conversation aligns with other existing frameworks. In this context, we're going to look at the SNA 2025 and more importantly, the policy responsiveness of that. The last speaker would give us the NSO perspective in terms of uptake and how as different international agencies, we're going to support nsos. To do that, I would want to share with you three specific issues that I personally picked up and I'm hoping that in the submissions from the four panelists, they're going to reflect on that as well.

We need to think through very carefully how we actualize the Beyond GDP Dashboard indicators with existing well being measures and how the complementarities can be actualized. Secondly, we heard clearly from Nora and Martini that the work on the enablers is yet to be finalized. But you would all bear with me that if really we want this Beyond GDP Dashboard to work from a policy perspective, then it is the enablers that we need to focus on more, especially when it has to do with resource allocation and defining behavioral change, as was clearly mentioned by the Under Secretary General. And thirdly, what I picked up from an implementation point of view is yes, we can hear the voices of the voiceless from a data collection point of view, but in terms of implementation, how do we continue to hear their voices? So distinguished colleagues, as I indicated the four panelists that we have on my extreme left is Shantanu who is the Acting Director for the United Nations Statistical Division, doubling that in his substantive role from Edessa perspective.

My immediate left is Ms. Marquess who is the Vice Chairperson for the Statistical Commission. My immediate right I have Mr. Ulrich, which we all know as a chair for the Statistical Commission. So he's going to bring that perspective on what the Commission should do going forward. And last but not the least is Mr. Albert Cruiz who is the chief statistician for the International Monetary Fund who would also walk us through from the perspective of the SNA 2025. So with this backdrop I'm going to give each speaker eight minutes and each speaker would respond to two questions and I'm going to start with Mr. Ulrich, from the perspective of the Statistical Commission would want to hear from you what has resonated strongly from your perspective, looking at the conceptual framework to start with and also the dashboard of indicators.

And going forward, what do you see as the greatest opportunity for not only the Statistical Commission but the global statistical community in its entirety in utilizing this then in your second question, as I indicated, this is a process that has involved different subject specialists, economists, environmental scientists and well being researchers and civil society as part of the process. As the chief of the Commission, how can the statistical community help bring coherence to these diverse efforts while ensuring that the resulting metrics meet the real goal and trust that official statistics demand. Over to you Mr. Ulrich. Thank you Samuel. It's good questions.

First, I think I would like to thank the hleg for the ambitious presentation of poll, the conceptual work and the proposed dashboard. The Statistical Commission welcomes the work in general which aligns with the ongoing efforts to strengthen people centered and planet centered statistics. We will have several examples at the 57th session as we will discuss social and demographic statistics, environment and climate change statistics and well being measurements. The shift towards measuring what we treasure strongly echoes the Commission's long standing call to broaden statistical systems beyond economic output alone. The framework's three interconnected pillars provide a coherent structure that reflects the multidimensional nature of development.

The explicit dual focus on humans and the planet is particularly timely given the need for integrated data on climate, health, inequality and social cohesion. I think the opportunity for the statistical community to contribute is to support the selection of robust indicator and ensure consistency, comparability and adherence to establishment statistical standards. Secondly, national statistical offices can contribute methods for long term sustainability metrics. In addition, there is an opportunity for national statistical office to ensure data quality in the various emerging domains presented. The integration of geospatial information, administrative data and new data technology will enhance granularity and timeliness.

In addition, let's also not forget to support countries with limited resources will be essential to ensure that this agenda is implemented universally and equitably. And finally, we invest a lot in data flows between the member states and international organizations to measure the progress of the 2030 Agenda. It is crucial that all our work has to be or has to build up on existing mechanism that we established since 2015 and we all know that resources are limited and that that's why we cannot afford to ignore the progress made in this matter the past 10 years. Your second question, the beyond GDP moves has drawn energy from many different communities, economies, environmental scientists, well being, research, civil society and as chair of the Commission, I try to give you an answer how we can help to bring together these diverse efforts while ensuring that the result metrics meet the rigors and from that official statistics demand, the statistical community can help develop coherent across the various approaches. With a common conceptual and methodological method, we can ensure that the new indicators are built on harmonized definition and transparent metadata.

These indicators will be understandable and usable so statistical offices can ensure that new indicators are comparable over time and across countries by applying established quality assurance framework such as the UN Fundamental Principles of Official statistics helps guarantee also trust and we should also highlight the importance of data management and data stewardship to ensure data can be used effectively, responsibly and sustainably across the entire data life cycle. In line with the FFD4 paragraph 23 from the Civilia commitment, it is an important it is important to recall that data do not only help us measure progress, but they are also crucial for implementing policies coming to an end. And finally, the UN Statistical Commission is the best placed body to coordinate and steward this work.

It brings global legitimacy, technical experience and a unique mandate to align these diverse initiatives under a coherent statistical framework. Thank you very much. Back to you.

Thank you very much, Chair. We tend to Ms. Marquez and equally she would provide two responses to the following questions. The second section highlighted a wealth of expertise across the Commission's technical groups, from again, environmental and economic accounting to SDG indicators to big data. What are the most promising connections you see across these bodies of work? And how can the Commission foster greater synergy among them in servicing the Beyond GDP agenda?

Your second question. As a vice Chair of the Commission and head of a national statistical office in the Global south, you bring a dual perspective. You bring a dual perspective based on today's discussion. What steps can the Commission take to ensure that Beyond GDP efforts strengthen rather than stretch the capacity of national statistical offices, particularly those of us in the Global South?

Thank you very much for the questions. And let me start by saying that I consider that it's very, very important, this conversation we're having this afternoon because it's what I call an early intervention, trying to imagine, trying to. To know what lies ahead. So that is very important because we can start thinking, even though we don't know the final result of the report, we can already start thinking about what we will be doing in the future. And referring to your first question, I'll start by saying that early engagement also between the global statistical community and the high level expert group is essential.

Building upon existing achievements and best practices will strengthen alignment with ongoing frameworks and ensure proper consideration of regional and national context. The engagement of the statistical community is evident in a wide range of resolutions and topics discussed at the Commission's annual sessions. Experts regularly, as we all know, regularly share best practices and cutting edge findings which are incorporated into national statistical systems. In addition, our webinars, reports and official documentation help strengthen coordination and reduce overlap. These connections will contribute to a robust statistical foundation for the Beyond GDP agenda.

It's us that we the ones that know better. The statistical foundation, the statistical infrastructure we count on for building upon the SDGs and building upon other experiences. And I would to like to recover something that has been mentioned in the second part of this conference and it's the importance of granularity and timeliness as a requisite to make proper connections. If we have granular information, it's much easier to make those connections in different, in different areas and themes. But Also, and perhaps this is something that it was also mentioned we do not usually address in the first place, is that we need to make proper connection.

We need to communicate clearly with clear messages to policymakers and society. Any indicators or any dashboard would be helpful and successful as long as we used citizen wording and we make it easily understood by the public at large. And the second question regarding the capacity of National Statistical Offices in the Global South, I think that capacity relies heavily on technical assistance, on sharing best practices and sufficient financial resources either from national sources or the international community, and also a well defined role of the national statistical system. So if that role is well defined and the National Statistical Offices understand this role, then it would be the appropriation of the project. The appropriation of the new indicators would be much easily understood in different contexts.

The convergence of political decisions and technical considerations can create favorable conditions for strengthening these institutions, especially when priorities include inclusive criterias and phased goals. National Statistical Office in the Global south should see seek early engagements in discussing methodological foundations, information needs and capacity building strategies. New indicators or dashboards should not necessarily imply additional burdens. Building on existing indicators and adapting incremental approaches should be key objectives of the Beyond GDP agenda. So in both of my answers I include the early engagement, early engagement with the High Level Group and early engagement of National Statistical Office from the Global South.

In both cases, I think this is a key element for a successful and coordinated work. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Vice Chair Colleagues, we've heard from both the Chair and the Vice Chair of the Statistical Commission and we seem to have clarity in our minds going forward based on their respective submissions. I trust that we all heard it clearly from the Under Secretary General that once this session is over, we're going to go through some intergovernmental processes of which the mandate rests with the Statistical Commission. So we are hoping that with these submissions from both the Chair and the Vice Chair going forward, we're going to follow through to ensure that we maximize the utility of the Beyond GDP conversation. We're going to switch over to speak to Mr. Crowes of the IMF, the chief statistician.

And also I've just been told he he's the upcoming Chair for the Inter Secretariat Working Group on National Account. So he's going to give us the perspective of how this Beyond GDP conversation sits within the 2025 systems for national Accounting. And then he's going to share with us his thoughts, his concrete suggestions on the way forward, specifically looking at how the statistical community can do two major things ensuring quality as was mentioned by Mr. Ulrich earlier on, and also as the USG indicated, the policy relevance of the beyond GDP conversation in the context of the SNA 2025. Albert, over to you please.

Thank you. Chair. Are my slides visible? Yes, they are. We need to go beyond gdp.

I think we all agree on that and even Simon Kuznets agreed on that when he introduced GDP 19 years ago before American Congress. GDP doesn't measure important things like household services, it doesn't mean distributional work and it is not the same welfare or well being. So I think a lot of mean exceeding since the time GDP was introduced and I think the present initiative is a great opportunity, both because the mandate comes from the Secretary General itself. There's real need to have these indicators even better than we have them now. And also because statisticians are much involved.

If you look at the high level group, that meant there's a lot of statistical expertise there. And this is wonderful because if you indicate the framework, you need to assure the indicators. Indicators are well defined, the quality is assured, they're measurable. And that's why I think this is an initiative we should all help. So my role is to tell a little bit about the sna, what it can do and to give some advice how the beyond GDP can be successful.

Successful means that actually the indicators are produced. So it's not only on paper, not only conceptuals actually produced, but also being used. So what can the SNA do? There's a lot in the SNA beyond GDP. I think if you would have to complete SNA it would be more than 1000 indicators.

GDP is only one of them. So there's a lot more in SNA than in gdp. And it makes a lot of sense to base indicators on guidance in the SNA for a number of reasons. First of all, we need well defined indicators and the SNA is a very well defined framework. Secondly, we need international comparable data and the SNA has been adopted all over the world.

But it's also a very comprehensive system of income, of spending, of wealth, of saving. And in that sense, if you have indicators based on such a system, then it's easier to do analytical work, to understand how indicators are moving, etc. That being said, there also should be a lot beyond sna, a lot of things that are not included in sna. So it's not dependency for everything. But I think SNA can help and I'm going to say a little bit about that.

This works always good. So last year, in this exact room, I was sitting there, we all approved the SNA and this was a great achievement after so many years we decided to change that framework to measure the economy and there are three main drivers, digitalization, globalization and sustainability. So actually sustainability well being was of the main reasons we needed to change the sna and that's why there's a lot in there that we can use. So here's some key developments relevant to Beyond CDP There's a lot more focus on net measures, the net domestic project and other net measures analytical preferable to gross measures because not only depreciation, consumption of fixed capital but also depletion are subtracted and of course it needs to be measured well. But subtracting depletion as a cost of production makes it more clear what actually production means for future generations.

There's a lot of guidance on distributional accounts on household income, consumption and wealth by population groups and there's a lot of links to the things that Andre just talked about. The cei, the Environmental Economic accounting they explicitly acknowledged as complementary macroeconomic statistical standards. So the environment and the economy are measured in similar ways, similar definitions, similar concept. So actually you can study the economy and the environment more conjunct and that's normal and very good because many decisions are also so affecting both there's strengthened treatment of natural resource assets, clearer guidance on depletion, clarification of the asset boundary, non renewable energy resources are part of the asset boundary, more guidance on things like biological resources and all alignment with the SEER framework and also there's expanded guidance on things that are a bit outside the production framework, extended accounts, unpaid households, care services described in a way that it can be connected to the sna. So to state the obvious, this links to the beyond CDP discussion not solving everything, solving parts.

But I think it's important to make use of these connections for the reasons I just stated for sustainability, the net domestic product depletion guidance, the links to the system of environmental economic accounting is very important. We work on the national resources asset boundary. Obviously there's still outstanding issues. Andre mentioned the devaluation of nature and ecosystem services. So there's still work to do.

But it makes sense to have a beyond TDP indicator framework linked to a statistical framework to ensure it's well defined, comparable and part of a bigger whole for inclusion and equity. There's a lot of guidance on distributional accounts going from quintile to decile distributions, Household adjusted disposable income, there's a data gap initiative. OCD is doing wonderful work there leading the work to have income and wealth Distributed across income groups. So these are all things that are linked to the inclusion equity agenda and there's some choices here. Choosing the household disposable income is logical from the household perspective but there's a lot of income outside households and are we going to look into debt how that distributed or not.

So there's choices to be made on well being this guidance on extended accounts, unpaid work, human capital, some traction but not too much to be honest on social cohesion and there's still outstanding issues on survey instruments, admin data all beyond the SNA scope. But I guess the main message is that we should yeah you make use of the information and the guidance that is there. So having guidance, having conceptual frameworks is wonderful but what are we going to do? How are we going to ensure there's actual data? I think we should piggyback on the work that's being done now in implementing the SNA and balance of payments Manual by the way.

So the World bank, we at the IMF but others as well are investing a lot in workshops, in guidance, in advisory reports but also very concrete technical assistance to help countries implement the new system national accounts. Costa Rica already implemented the main implementations including a lot on well being and sustainability. Most others will follow the coming years. But trying to piggyback on actually what's being done to implement GDP might help actually produce the beyond GDP indicators as far as they're linked to the sna. So NDP is something we in the World bank and others can give guidance on implementation of distributional accounts from many of the OECD countries Canada, Europe there's already a lot there data is being produced and I think we can strengthen that further to other countries.

The integration with climate and environmental data and initiatives data caption is free Air emission accounts, energy accounts they're available in many, many countries and they can be used and produced and I think in almost all countries in the world but also something that's the multi regional input output tables Mario Figaro that basically link the production structures in all the countries in the world so you have a basis for the global value change and that makes it possible to calculate footprints and and I guess footprints are also important to calculate the impact of climate. Extended thematic account for household care services. There's some plans in place actually to help countries to do this and forward looking basically the holy grail. Martin already said this is far away and Richard you said that too. This is not easy the comprehensive wealth thing but in the end we need to do that total wealth.

So natural capital, human capital Social capital, economic capital, how do you measure that? Because that's really what we give to the next generation. That's really sustainability. What do we have now? What do the next generation have?

And we need to invest on that. There's something with the wealth of Nations. We're working on that, but yeah, that's a bit further away, I guess. So my last slide. What should we do and how should we do it?

First, alignment. I think it's important to align the high level expert group recommendations to existing statistical standards. I say it again because you want it to have well defined, you want it to have international comparable and you want to have it defined in an analytical framework that will actually allow you to study the bigger whole and not isolated indicators. Implement. This is the piggyback thing.

There's a lot of work going on and a lot of efforts to implement the new sna, the New Balance of Payments manual and other manuals also coming. We can use that to also try to implement some of the indicators. We need to exchange experiences. The ISW DNA that I'll be sharing from, I think from next week on basically has this compiler set, this ICM stack that basically contains a lot of manuals, a lot of trainings, materials. There's a collaborative workspace.

There's also our first external AI tool. Talk to the manuals, you can actually ask all kind of methodological questions to this tool. How do you deal with this? Initial accounts, how do you deal with that in balance of payments? And this is a platform perhaps where we can exchange information and coordinates.

I mean we should really coordinate our work to ensure there's not too much report burning, but also to coordinate how we can convince our policymakers. I mean we just heard some great examples. Levi from Norway gave this example. Richard told how this done in the uk, Andre in Canada, in the Netherlands, my country where I worked before, we have also a monitor that we present, we still do, right every year to the Parliament on sustainability and well being. So kind of exchange and coordinate how we can drive this beyond GDP agenda.

The indicators based on firm statistical frameworks to policy decisions. Starting that if there's a policy decision by Parliament or government, it's not only looking at the economy but the broader perspective. We can learn from each other, coordinate our efforts and try to make it successful. Because success means that the indicators have high quality, are well defined and actually used. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Albert. We turn to Our last panelist, Mr. Shantanu Mukji, who is the Director for Economic Analysis and Policy Division and acting Director of the Statistics Division. You have the following two questions. As the Beyond GDP agenda moves forward, in your view, how can the be greater traction among national statistical offices and other institutions across all regions? And the follow up question is what forms of international Support can help NSOs prepare for and engage productively with the Beyond GDP agenda?

How do you see the UNSD and UNDESA playing a role in this regard? Thank you.

Thanks, Sam. Perhaps there's not much to be said as the last speaker, which is a nice thing, but if I think about the Beyond GDP agenda as a big complex thing, I think it helps me to break it down into four pieces, roughly. The first is the conceptual framework. And each of these pieces I think can come down to the national level, national statistical office level in slightly different ways. So the conceptual framework is something which is, I think, new over here because it is presenting a kind of composite look at what matters.

Now, if we are going to take this to the ground in a way that's meaningful for countries, then we must be open to the idea that some of this framework will make more sense in one country than the other other, and that there may be differences in indicators and measurements within countries. If you're looking at crime, for example, which may be an important part of the conceptual framework, how it's picked up and measured is going to vary from country to country. So I think when we talk about the Beyond GDP agenda moving forward, I think we have to first say that this need not be a monolith in terms of measurement indicators. The second. So from the conceptual framework, which is so far mostly words, we go to the next bit, which is potentially very well measured but not specified, which is the enablers right now.

Enablers, I think, is a very interesting idea because in principle it's based on evidence. You shouldn't be saying something is an enabler unless you have evidence for it. I mean, you could, but still. And if there's evidence, it means there's data somewhere in the pipeline that's been used to create that evidence base. So I think, and at the same time there's a good deal of scientific work that's been done on what truly are enablers and what are not.

And I had the privilege to work with a group of scientists that wrote Sustainable Development Report some years ago and they boiled everything down to six enablers. So maybe that was a very minimalistic approach. But I think this idea of enablers is something people can already work on to see what are the indicators that really make for enablers. And as somebody who has worked with a lot of policy people across the world. I would say the indicators to really focus on are probably not the synergies, but the trade offs.

And how you actually balance the trade offs through a system that is meaningful in terms of measurement is important work that can be done to guide better decision making.

The third thing is the set of things that we want to measure, right? And for this maybe some of what Bert said and others have said is going to be important because these are things which perhaps for which there isn't agreed upon definition, there isn't an agreed upon methodology. And these are fertile places for the kind of early engagement that Graciela was talking about to get into the game. And then the fourth bit is about the indicators that are already known. So These are the 50% odds that are part of the SDG framework.

And I think the approach here has to be that this is really a chance to address the unfinished data agenda of the SDGs. So things that are waiting for better disaggregation, very specific. Now these are indicators that are there systemic issues in national statistical offices and others that are getting in the way across the board on some of these things. So I think depending on which part of this beyond GDP agenda you're going to pick, I think is going to land with slightly different set of responsibilities, opportunities and outcomes. One thing I didn't hear of in the report, which struck me as interesting, was a sense of urgency.

Now the reason I'm putting this here is that if you look at our report on SDG monitoring in 2016, I believe, let's see, one third of the indicators had good Data coverage and nine years later in 2025 this moved to 70%. So when you're talking about 234 indicators, obviously this is huge amount of work done when you're boiling the world down to just about 15, so half of 30%. It means there's a lot that is not going to get done in those nine years if that's the pace one is going to go with. And how do we increase the pace at which this works? Well, well, different things matter for different countries.

I think one takeaway is that political buy in always helps. And I think the political buy in has been sort of essential to national statistical offices for a long time. Even if you look at the very early descriptions of how national income is calculated. And in Diane Coyle's book, this is William Petty, it was basically to help the UK fight the Second Anglo Dutch War. And even before that in 1600s, in the context of my own country.

The Revenue Minister of the Emperor Akbar worked out a national income based system to help have standard sort of taxation loads across the world. So I mean the political imperative is essential here and so is the sense of urgency and how these are built in perhaps may also be helpful in deciding which indicators will impale this more coherently. And how would we do this? How would DESA and others help to do this? Well, DESA is at the seat of a lot of intergovernmental processes.

So depending on how this evolves, desa, not just the statistical division will probably be involved. And in terms of the statistical division of itself, I think there has been a lot said the international statistical community finances, structural issues, methodologies, capacity building, peer learning. I think this is a collective effort among the broader international statistical community. Thank you.

Apologies for getting you to come to an abrupt end. We definitely have to stop by 6pm so I'm just going to quickly wrap up, given that we are just beyond 6pm colleagues. The good news is that the good news is that both the Chair of the Commission and the Acting Director for the Statistical Division have given us their assurances that in the next coming days there is room for more engagement. And as was said by the presenters of the High Level Expertise Expert group, let us not see this as an end, let's see this as the beginning. There's room for engagement, there's room for revisions.

So my word to all of us is that we contribute actively to the process once the Statistical Commission has the mandate for the implementation of this. Thank you so much and have a good evening.