Statistics Denmark will work closely with the General Statistics Office of Vietnam (GSO) and other relevant ministries to exchange and share with them Danish expertise, experiences and knowledge gained after many years of study and practices in the field.

H.E. Kim Højlund Christensen, Ambassador of Denmark to Vietnam made the above statement at a signing ceremony in Hanoi on November 26 of an agreement to support Vietnam’s ongoing efforts to provide adequate and trustworthy official statistics, based on international standards and trends.

The signing ceremony of an agreement to support Vietnam’s ongoing efforts to provide adequate and trustworthy official statistics. Photo: Embassy of Denmark

Under the agreement, signed by Director General of the GSO Nguyen Thi Huong and Director General of Statistics Denmark Birgitte Anker, the Nordic country will provide US$1 million for a 30-month cooperation project jointly implemented by Statistics Denmark and the GSO. The project focuses on the use of administrative data for producing population, migration, and education statistics, exploring the opportunities in big data for producing statistics as well as producing the first-ever environmental-economic accounts for Vietnam.

“Understanding population and migration dynamics are crucial for any society and in Vietnam, the statistics available on these issues are challenged by insufficient and lack of data. The agreement we are signing today is a very important instrument for Vietnam and Denmark to start our good cooperation in supporting Vietnam to improve the quality of its national statistics,” said Kim Højlund Christensen.

Speaking at the signing ceremony, Director General of the GSO Nguyen Thi Huong said that using administrative data and big data is now a trend, which is widely used by National Statistics Systems in the world to make full and effective use of data resources collected from ministries, agencies and other data owners and to ensure timely provision of disaggregated statistic data with good quality for governments, enterprises and other data users domestically and internationally.

“The GSO is committed to closely collaborating with relevant ministries and agencies in Vietnam and Statistics Denmark to implement this project successfully and thereby strengthen the capacity and improve the quality of our official statistics. This project will also contribute to the future sustainable development of the country, especially when the GSO is implementing Vietnam Statistical Development Strategy for the period 2021-2030 with a vision towards 2045,” Huong added.

An overview of the meeting between Director General of the GSO Nguyen Thi Huong and Ambassador of Denmark to Vietnam Kim Højlund Christensen. Photo: Embassy of Denmark

The project will kick-start long-term cooperation in which the GSO and their partners will co-create and elaborate on new ways of working with the production of statistics and presentation of data. Experts from Denmark will give direct input to the process and will support in showcasing best practices on data collection and processing, usage of statistics, communication, and cooperation among public authorities and with data suppliers.

For her part, Birgitte Anker said that Statistics Denmark is highly experienced in using administrative data sources for producing statistics.

“We are looking forward to fruitful cooperation with our GSO counterpart. We have explored the opportunities in big data to produce both official and experimental statistics for years. Statistics on Environmental-Economic Accounts are also of high relevance internationally. We hope that this cooperation will create more knowledge on the Vietnamese society for evidence-based decision-making and monitoring of international agendas like the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs),” said the director-general of Statistics Denmark.

Since 2015, Vietnam and Denmark have engaged in Strategic Sector Cooperation (SSC) in health, education, food safety, and recently in statistics with the purpose of promoting sustainable and responsible growth, jobs, and prosperity in Vietnam.

Within the SSC framework, the Danish public authorities have established a partnership in which they can support their Vietnamese partner ministries with expertise and facilitate the transfer of Danish know-how and experiences relevant to local priority issues, conditions, and needs.