The Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) conducted 2-day training sessions for Municipal Officers of the Bekwai Municipal Assembly on the compilation of administrative data on Tuesday, March 28th and Wednesday, March 29th, 2023 at the Bekwai Municipal Assembly Conference Room at Bekwai in the Ashanti Region. The training was attended by the Municipal Chief Executive (MCE) and Municipal Coordinating Director (MCD), as well as other key officers in charge of Administrative Data Management of the various decentralised departments, agencies and institutions in the Municipality.
The training aimed to equip Municipal Officers with the necessary skills and knowledge to effectively compile Administrative Data of the Municipality using a well-designed and comprehensive template with a 2015 baseline, which will be used to inform national development policies and programs. The GSS recognizes the critical role that administrative data plays in the development of the country and therefore sought to enhance the capacity of Municipal Officers to collect and report data accurately and efficiently.
The Municipal Chief Executive of the Municipality, Honourable Kwaku Kyei Baffour, in his address at the onset, emphasized the importance of accurate data in decision-making and commended the GSS for their efforts to improve data collection at the Municipal. He also called on all Municipal Officers to take the training seriously and apply the knowledge gained in their daily activities.
The MCE added that the government of Ghana continues to be committed to evidence-based decision making and planning in all facets of policy decisions in our development agenda. The training will provide adequate data to help in measuring, monitoring and estimating the extent to which we have made progress on national development agenda.
The Municipal Coordinating Director, Mr. Daniel Osei-Asibey, in a closing remark also recounted the importance of data and how it can be used to improve the lives of people at the grassroots level. He urged Municipal Officers to collaborate with the GSS to ensure that the data collected is accurate and reflects the needs of their respective communities.
The training covered a range of topics including data collection methods, data management, data quality control, and reporting. Participants were also introduced to the various data tools and technologies used by the GSS to enhance data collection and analysis with a template that has over 100 indicators cutting across several thematic areas like health, education, agriculture, water, sanitation, budget, births and deaths among others.
In a post training interview, the Municipal Statistician, Mr Clement Karikari pointed out that the training has strengthened the capacity and widen the scope of the Statistics Department in gathering administrative data especially with modern technique, approach as well as requisite knowledge in data compilation, screening, and analysis.
The Municipal Statistician in addition emphasized that the Statistics office will continue to ensure that credible, reliable and quality administrative data from the decentralised departments, agencies and institutions will be well coordinated and validated for effective and efficient policy formulation, implementation, monitoring and evaluation. The administrative data would also serve as a guide to measure accurately the socio-economic status of our people and the performance of the Municipality on the implementable SDGs indicators.
In furtherance, Mr Emmanuel George Osei, the Director of the Regional Offices from the Ghana Statistical Service underscored the importance of the exercise which had started already in some selected Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs) by saying “this training has been put together to support MMDAs and for that matter the Local Government Service to compile already existing data that are relevant for them for their medium term plans and for their annual progress reports which are requirements from the National Development Planning Commission. We are working collaboratively with several stakeholders with financial support from the UNDP, GIZ and the Commonwealth Local Government Forum”.
He continued to say that the GSS was committed to improving data collection and analysis in Ghana and will continue to collaborate with stakeholders at all levels to achieve this goal.
On the whole, the training program was interactive and included practical sessions that allowed the Municipal Officers to apply the skills and knowledge they had acquired. The participants were also given the opportunity to ask questions and engage with the facilitators on areas they needed further clarification.
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