President, Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics

To examine possible challenges that face Arab official statistics, one would not be surprised that much of the challenges to certain extent resemble those that either had faced or currently applicable to the context of African, Asian or even American and European official statistics. Although the environment is different in many aspects, yet learning from best and worst practices in each specific area of official statistics is perquisite to launch viable coordinated efforts in the Arab region to catch up with well developed NSOs worldwide. The initiative that was supported by PARIS21 to develop National Strategies for Official Statistics (NSDS) was an opportunity for collective Arab framework to amplify potential gains in the pursuance towards greater public trust, relevancy, competitiveness and attractiveness of Arab official statistics. There are many challenges facing the improvement of Arab official statistics including managing statistical priorities, relevancy of statistics (utilizing statistics by users and meeting their demands), statistical literacy of users, influencing decision makers and the emerging of new statistical areas. This paper examines the potential development of Arab framework that focuses on autonomy, trust, relevancy and attractiveness to better respond to major challenges supported by best practices in each area