1. Background

The United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) is implementing a technical assistance project to build technical capacity in Cambodia and the Maldives to analyse household-level micro data with innovative methodologies to assess the potential impact of social protection schemes on people furthest left behind in the context of accessing basic opportunities. The ultimate objective of the project is to help governments mainstream results into policy documents or tools to design and implement inclusive and evidence-based social protection policies.  The project builds on two user-friendly policy tools already developed by ESCAP: 

1. The Leaving No One Behind (LNOB) Platform helps users explore how various circumstances intersect and create inequalities in access to basic opportunities captured by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) indicators. Building on Classification and Regress Trees (CART) and the Dissimilarity index (D-index), the Platform analyses nationally representative household surveys to generate and visualize evidence at national and subnational levels to identify groups left furthest behind and the circumstances they share in 19 SDG indicators and 33 countries across Asia and the Pacific.

    

2. The Social Protection Online Toolbox (SPOT) Simulator helps users design a mix of non-contributory social protection schemes and demonstrates the impact of hypothetical scenarios on poverty, inequality and consumption. The tool also projects the cost of such schemes. The results are obtained by using national representative household surveys such as Household Income and Expenditure Surveys (HIES) in 27 countries across Asia and the Pacific.

Merging these two innovative tools, ESCAP developed a new app, Social Protection to Leave no One Behind (SP2LNOB) App, which demonstrates the impact of extending social protection on inequality of opportunity. Using this tool, governments can assess the potential impact social protection on strengthening equality of opportunity in a variety of priority areas including nutrition, health, education and living standards, among others. In addition to offline policy experimentation, the new tool, if desired, can also provide an online extension to showcase results to the public.

The prototype of the tool was introduced to representatives from Cambodia and Maldives in September 2024 to seek their feedback and ensure country-specific contextualization. In the upcoming technical training, ESCAP will build capacity among technical specialists from target countries to use and modify the underlying algorithm associated with the SP2LNOB App. The training will also provide a platform for discussing further updates and improvements to the tool ahead of national policy workshops.

2. Training Objectives

The primary objective of this technical training is to build capacity among technical specialists of target countries to use, update and modify the SP2LNOB app. At the end of this training, participants will be able to use the underlying algorithm in an open-source statistical software programme, R, and generate evidence as needed. Trainees will also be able to analyze new surveys to explore new thematic areas as they see fit. The participants will then be called upon as resource people during the national workshop in Cambodia and the Maldives to demonstrate the App and its role for improving social protection policies. Ultimately, this will strengthen inclusive policy making in the area of social protection.

3. Target Audience

The technical training will draw participation from technical officials and specialists from relevant ministries, departments and agencies in Cambodia and the Maldives, including agencies working on social protection as well as the National Statistics Office. ESCAP will sponsor the travel of four (4) specialists each from Cambodia and the Maldives. Ideally, country delegations should have a mix of expertise on social protection, data analysis and information and communications technologies.

4. Organization and Participation

The introductory workshop will be organized in person in the Meeting Room G of the United Nations Conference Centre, between 29 April and 1 May 2025. To fully benefit from the training and master the algorithm, participants should bring their laptops and follow the pre-workshop guidance note to be shared by ESCAP.

The tentative programme of the training is available on the Programme tab.