Training Course Preparation Booklet, July 27th to 31st July 2009, Canberra (Australia)

This will be an introductory day. A chance for us all to meet and get to know each other and to explore what the ‘Global Project on Measuring the Progess of Societies’ is all about, as well as to go over the course content.  There will be a session on Understanding Social Change and some group work during the day.

“The project challenges the common belief that progress and economic growth are one and the same. The aim is to lay the statistical groundwork - through a set of Progress Measures - for policies which value economic, social and environmental welfare, going beyond mere output.  The ultimate goal is to foster the improved functioning of democracies in the information age by creating a higher level of “customer satisfaction” with democracy.”

- Angel Gurría, OECD Secretary-General, - Speech given at 2nd OECD World Forum (2007)

The Istanbul Movie, “Measuring and Fostering the Progress of Societies”

Day 2 will be about why we measure progress and especially why it is so important in today’s world. We will see some examples of initiatives that are already underway and undertake a group exercise on which sectors should measure progress.

“Every year, our federal government spends almost $3 trillion on a wide range of activities, provides hundreds of billions of dollars worth of tax preferences, and issues thousands of pages of regulations. Yet what’s astonishing is the federal government does all this without knowing which programs and policies are making a real difference and which ones aren’t. It’s a little like an airplane pilot flying at night without an instrument panel. This must change!”

- The Honourable David M. Walker , Comptroller General of the United States - Speech given at 2nd OECD World Forum (2007)

“Are you confused about the state of your country and where it is going?...Governments should be judged on the effectiveness of their policies and projects, but against which benchmarks? And how can citizens take part in honest democratic debate about policy alternatives if they do not know what is really going on in their own country or region? Information is a vital input to economic and political processes, and greater access to information, helped by advances in technology, has changed the ways in which markets and societies work.”

- Enrico Giovannini, Chief Statistician of the OECD - Why measuring progress matters, OECD Observer No. 262, July (2007) - Video

Day 3 will cover the pragmatic aspects of measuring progress and include a lot of groupwork. We will consider the main approaches to measuring progress and wellbeing, how to define dimensions and form a ‘Taxonomy of Progress’, how to select the indicators and more.

“If you want to know how production is growing or whether spending on goods and services is up or down, then GDP provides a good starting point… But there are more fundamental problems. For instance, GDP does not take depletion of natural resources or environmental damage into account any more than it takes account of capital depreciation.”

- Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prize Winner - article ‘Progress, What Progress’? in OECD Observer, no 272, March (2009)

Day 4 will cover the basic principles of communication and look at what ICT tools are now available to better disseminate statistics and information more generally.

“Only very few musicians can read the notes and say: ‘Oh, this is beautiful music!’And I think this is often how we are. We that love and work with statistics, often we show the notes, we don’t play the music.”

On our last day we will conclude by taking an indepth look at successful measuring progress initiatives in action. We will see the kinds of things that do and don’t work, and discuss how what you have learned can be taken forward when you return to work.

“Measuring a nation’s progress – providing information about whether life is getting better – is one of the most important tasks that a statistical agency can take on. But it is far from straightforward. In 2002 the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) released Measuring Australia’s Progress (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2002), a publication built around a set of headline indicators that spanned economic, social and environmental concerns. Different projects from around the world have used different ways of addressing what is essentially the same question: Is life getting better? Each agency has followed its own route. But along the way, each agency has faced the same core set of key decisions.”

“We urge statistical offices, public and private organisations, and academic experts to work alongside representatives of their communities to produce high-quality, facts-based information that can be used by all of society to form a shared view of societal well-being and its evolution over time”

- Istanbul Declaration, taken at the 2nd OECD World Forum in Istanbul, June 2007