"Huge opportunities": UN Resident Coordinator praises India's DPI ecosystem

Centred on the timely theme, "Unlocking the Potential of Administrative Data," the landmark event brought together global leaders and national policy architects to chart the future of real-time, evidence-based governance.

Speaking at the technical session, Stefan Priesner, United Nations Resident Coordinator (RC) in India, highly lauded India's pioneering strides in the digital landscape.

"I think it is really important to stress that India's very advanced digital public infrastructure opens huge opportunities to use administrative data for developmental decision-making," Priesner said.

"To use administrative data that are updated on a daily basis is a huge, important complement to these surveys... I express my full support to MoSPI and other partners with whom we have been working together for a long time."

At the same time, he stressed that data collection must remain people-centric and guided by ethical considerations.

"What is important is always, of course, to keep the purpose in mind. Behind each data, there is always a person. And so we have to always connect the objective of policymaking with the data sets," Priesner said.

Expressing the United Nations' continued support for India's statistical ecosystem, he added, "Since I'm the head of the United Nations in India as the United Nations Resident Coordinator, I express my full support to the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation and other partners. We have been working together for a long time, and it has been a pleasure to attend today's celebration of this important National Statistics Day."

According to an official press release issued by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI), the Ministry commemorated the 20th Statistics Day on June 29 (Monday) at Dr. Ambedkar International Centre in New Delhi.

Statistics Day is observed annually to mark the birth anniversary of Professor Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis, regarded as the architect of India's modern statistical system and a pioneer in economic planning.

The theme for this year's Statistics Day, 'Unlocking the Potential of Administrative Data,' highlighted the increasing importance of harnessing data generated through administrative processes to support evidence-based policymaking and governance.

The inaugural session was chaired by Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister, PK Mishra. Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) for MoSPI Rao Inderjit Singh, MoSPI Secretary Saurabh Garg and National Statistical Commission Chairperson Saibal Chattopadhyay were also present.

A technical session on the theme followed the inaugural function. During his opening remarks, UN Resident Coordinator in India Stefan Priesner linked administrative data with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), calling such data an asset rather than merely a by-product of administrative processes. He also emphasised the need to build trust in administrative data collection, adopt privacy-by-design principles and ensure safeguards against misuse.

The session featured presentations demonstrating how administrative and sectoral data ecosystems can be used to improve public service delivery, operational efficiency and policymaking. (ANI)