This is the final report for the 2024 Evaluation of United Nations Statistical Institute for Asia and the Pacific (SIAP). The evaluation aims to provide the Commission with an impartial and reliable body of evidence regarding SIAP’s performance. This will facilitate deliberations during the 81st session of the Commission in April 2025 on SIAP’s continued relevance and financial viability. It seeks to provide ESCAP secretariat with forward-looking actionable recommendations to improve the results orientation and performance of SIAP. The specific evaluation objectives are:

i. To assess the results achieved and performance of SIAP using the standard evaluation criteria of impact, relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, sustainability and gender/disability inclusion mainstreaming.

ii. To determine ways to enhance the results-orientation of SIAP and identify specific outputs and delivery modalities that are most relevant to the member States, based on needs expressed by relevant stakeholders.

iii. To recommend actions for improving the results orientation and performance of the Institute.

The evaluation covers the management and implementation of the work programme of SIAP from 2020 to 2024, aligned with its Strategic Plan for that period. Through consultation with key stakeholders, the evaluation focuses on the relevance, effectiveness and efficiency of SIAP. These relate specifically to how SIAP plans and prioritizes work in the overall context of statistical capacity development needs in the region, ESCAP’s mandate and programme of work, and the broader operational realities faced by SIAP and ESCAP. The criteria of Impact and Sustainability are also examined with limited focus given the scope of the evaluation. Gender equality and disability inclusion are assessed as cross-cutting issues.

This evaluation comes at a time when data demand across the region continues to increase, including for the monitoring of the 2030 Agenda but also given the rapid pace of change in the use of non traditional data sources. The demand for statistical capacity development is increasing in complexity and scale. SIAP undertakes an annual needs assessment with National Statistical Offices (NSOs) to determine training priorities. SIAP also responds to some country requests for training. A further source of demand for courses comes from implementing partners. These are included in SIAP’s annual workplan which is presented to the SIAP Governing Council for approval. SIAP has continued to play a role in designing and delivering short-term training in priority areas of work identified by the ESCAP Committee on Statistics. These priorities have included the regional, sub-regional and national-level implementation of global strategies and programmes.

SIAP has delivered three main types of training programmes, with different and complementary functions. These are: 1) Long-term training programmes organized in collaboration with the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and are of duration of up to three months; 2) Short-term training programmes of up to one week have specific subject focus, such as SDG indicator(s) and the use of big data for official statistics; 3) E-learning programmes relating to statistical business processes or SDG Indicators. Facilitated e-learning courses include discussion forums where participants can interact amongst themselves and ask questions to the course facilitator. The training programmes focus on four main thematic areas: Environment and Climate Change; Social Sector; Economic Statistics; and Big Data, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence.