The President of the National Statistical Institute, Assoc. Prof. Atanas Atanasov, PhD participated in the 56th Session of the UN Statistical Commission (UNSC), which took place in New York. Traditionally, the moto of the event was “Better data. Better lives” and was attended by the heads of the statistical offices of all 193 UN Member States. Maria Gochova, the Head of the International Relations and Projects Department of the NSI, also attended the meeting.
The participants discussed and expressed their positions on the 32 topics from the agenda, with an emphasis being placed on three key topics for this year’s meeting: adoption of the final version of the UN System of National Accounts (SNA) 2025, adoption of the 2030 agenda for conducting and coordination of the World Population and Housing Census, and adoption of the revised framework of indicators for measuring the progress on the implementation of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The planned activities to mark the World Statistics Day on 20 October 2025 were also discussed, with this year’s slogan being “Driving change with quality statistics and data for everyone”.
Along with the main session of the UNSC, a number of side events were also included in the event’s program. Particularly interesting to the NSI representatives were the High-Level Seminar on “Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning for the Production of Official Statistics: Opportunities, Challenges and Future Directions” organized by the Austrian Statistical Office with keynote speaker Steve MacFeely, OECD’s Chief Statistician, as well as a discussion on reducing the response burden on business, jointly organized by the National Statistical Offices of the Netherlands and Denmark.
The UN Statistical Commission is the highest body in the International Statistical System that reviews and approves global statistical standards. Created by the United Nations Social and Economic Council, the UNSC assists the Council in promoting the development of national statistics and improving their comparability, coordinating the statistical work of specialized agencies, advising UN bodies on matters related to the collection, analysis and dissemination of statistical information, promoting the development of statistics and statistical methods in general.
