7.3 Organizing and setting up contacts#
As noted in Chapter 4.5.3 — Interaction with user groups outside the statistical advisory council: capturing their information needs, it can be useful for an NSO to establish and maintain networks and links with user groups, or with important individual users, in order to obtain their substantive inputs and feedback on a regular basis. Establishing close contacts with the experts of the various domains in ministries can help monitor and react to their current and future data needs. An NSO needs core data from ministries, and to ensure this, each ministry needs access to NSO experts. Maintaining close links with policy analysts in ministries can help an NSO to stay abreast of current demands for statistics and any ad hoc requirements for new data. Interagency committees consisting of experts in statistics and various domains may be convened to discuss recurring and emerging statistical issues/concerns.
The following activities could form part of the user engagement strategy to measure and analyse user satisfaction and needs:
Holding regular stakeholder workshops with key government users allows an NSO to assess the relevance of their current product offerings as well as future needs and any emerging new trends. In this way, users have a platform to give the NSO feedback on any specific data items they need and to ensure its products are responsive to what is needed throughout all levels of government. Different products also have their own key user groups that use and interact with the data regularly, and these users will also have statistical data requests and contributions. These inputs gathered from stakeholder workshops help confirm that products of an NSO remain relevant and can inform a response if they do not.
User groups can be organized by statistical areas comprising of the most important users in order to collect detailed feedback.
Using tools such as virtual interaction platforms, contact forms or social media.
Establishing eternal partnerships and service agreements as frameworks for organizing and establishing contacts.