NewsKey announcements, activities, and progress from the global IST community.

Today, the global demand for high-quality, real-time data is outpacing supply. As the volume and complexity of information continue to grow, technological innovation has become a key driver in transforming statistical systems. These systems are being pushed to deliver faster, more reliable data while reducing the burden on respondents. Achieving this requires close cooperation between governments, the scientific community, and the business sector.

At the 73rd plenary session of the Conference of European Statisticians (CES 2025) held in Geneva, Branko Josipovic, Director of the Statistical Office of the Republic of Serbia, participated in high-level discussions with leaders of national and international statistical systems.

The conference "Development of Decision Support Systems" was held at the Mona Plaza Hotel in Belgrade on January 30 and 31, 2025, on the occasion of launching of the project "EU4SORS - Development of a Modern Statistical System", which the Statistical Office of the Republic of Serbia is implementing with the financial support of the European Union, within the IPA 2022 program. This project aims to improve the capacity of the Statistical System of Serbia to provide advanced analytical solutions, as well as further strengthen statistics as a key partner in creating policies based on reliable and comprehensive data.

On December 18, the Statistical Office of the Republic Serbia held an engaging online meeting via videoconference with the Statistical Agency of the Republic of Uzbekistan. This important event marked another step forward in strengthening international cooperation in the field of official statistics.

In a collaborative effort, the Statistical Office of the Republic of Serbia (SORS), the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), and the Commonwealth of Independent States Statistical Committee (CIS-STAT) co-hosted the impactful 2024 UNECE/SORS/CIS-STAT Workshop on Metadata Driven Statistical Production. This event took place in Belgrade from December 3rd to 5th, as part of the UNECE Regular Programme for Technical Cooperation (RPTC) for 2024.

As a part of the official visit of the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan to the Republic of Serbia, a significant step was taken in strengthening bilateral relations between the two countries. The Statistical Office of the Republic of Serbia and the Ministry of Finance of the Republic of Kazakhstan signed a Protocol on cooperation in the field of exchange of statistical data on mutual trade.

In a panel discussion, organized by UNECE, at HLG2024 Modernisation Workshop in Geneva, Director of the Statistical Office of the Republic of Serbia Branko Josipovic joined experts to explore the evolving societal challenges that NSOs must adapt to over the next decade.

The Statistical Office of the Republic of Serbia (SORS) hosted a three-day meeting in Belgrade as part of the UNECE project “Open Source for Official Statistics”. The event gathered some of Europe's leading experts in the use of open-source software within official statistics.

The EFTA Secretariat, Eurostat and UNECE Statistics organised a high-level seminar in Belgrade, Serbia. Mr Branko Josipovic, SORS Director, opened this important meeting.

The Statistical Office of Serbia (SORS) recently hosted a bilateral meeting in Belgrade with the Chairman of the National Statistical Committee of the Kyrgyz Republic, Mr. Kudaibergenov Baktybek. The discussions centered on strengthening collaboration between the two countries, specifically in the realm of IT innovations.

According to the final results of the 2022 Census of Population, Households and Dwellings there are 6 647 003 inhabitants who reside in the Republic of Serbia. Slightly more than a half of the population are women, 3 415 025 (51.4%), while there are 3 231 978 (48.6%) men. The first book, „Ethnicity“, contains the results on the total number of inhabitants by sex and ethnicity, up to the level of municipalities and cities.

Another Synergy was held in Belgrade - the largest regional IT conference! This major technological and business event has been held for 22 years, and this time the slogan of the conference was "Speed ??IT up".

Within the framework of the Free Trade Agreement between the EFTA and the Southern African Customs Union (SACU), the EFTA Statistical Office organized an IT sector review with the Namibia Statistics Agency. The expert panel consisted of experts from EFTA Statistical Office, Statistics Norway and the Statistical Office of the Republic of Serbia.

On the occasion of the jubilee celebration, five years since the start of the Data Science Campus center, the English State Statistics Office (ONS Office for National Statistics UK), in the period July 12 - 14 2022 has organized a conference entitled "Advancing International Collaboration in Data Science and Big Data for Official Statistics". At the conference, attended by more than 50 delegates from more than 30 institutions around the world, the Statistical Office of the Republic of Serbia was represented by Branko Josipovic and Nebojša Tolic.

In the period 27th to 29th June, SORS hosted a workshop, organised by the UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), whose main topic was modernisation of official statistics and gathered 60 statisticians from Europe and Latin America. Participants from Australia and Canada joined and contributed to the workshop online.

The Blue Sky Thinking Network is the “ideas factory” for the statistical modernization community. The network provides a research and innovation platform where members can share ideas and look for partners to explore how new innovations to our production process can benefit statistical organisations.

The Statistical Office of the Republic of Serbia will hire about 2 500 instructors for the needs of conducting 2022 Census of Population, Households and Dwellings in the Republic of Serbia. A public call for candidates will be published on June 24, 2022.

Workshop dedicated to the system of official European statistics In the period from September 14th to 17th 2021, organized by Statistics Netherlands and UK’ statistics, a meeting was held dedicated to the exchange of experiences in the application of new solutions in the field of official statistics production.

Mr. Miladin Kovačević, Director general and Ms. Mira Nikić, assistant director of the Statistical Office of the Republic of Serbia, in charge of development and international cooperation, took the part in webinar, organized by World Bank. It was an internal World Bank webinar organized by the Community of Practice for Statistical Capacity Building, which is an informal network of WB project leaders and economists working on statistical projects around the world.

The objective of the third in the row Winter school, which was organized by the Eurostat, GOPA and Statistical office of the Republic of Serbia (SORS), was to exchange experiences and knowledge among partner NSIs, in order to be more agile and adaptable to the unpredictable changes and to ensure continuous growth and survival.

In the February 2021, members of the IST team, enforced with the colleagues from the SORS Regional data centres department, held the online meeting with the colleagues from the statistical offices of Russia, Uzbekistan, Armenia and Georgia. The subject was how to keep business continuity in the new situation caused by COVID19 pandemic. Lots of discussions, lots of new ideas, successful stories and solution which were approved in practice were on the table.

Again, keen to implement innovation in statistics, especially in understanding the needs of our users and to automatize the process of providing information to the statistical audience, IST team, together with the decision making support guys and Microsoft experts, following the OECD idea of including chat bot in communication with the data providers and interested parties, started to work on this idea.

In the period from 22-24. June 2020, the regular, 68th in a row, web session of the Conference of European Statisticians (CES) was held, bringing together CEOs of statistical offices from more than 60 countries and numerous international organizations. The aim of the conference was to enhance inter-institutional cooperation in facing official statistics with various challenges

Our eminent colleagues and IST developers, Aleksandra Skoko Despenic and Nevena Pavlovic, visited the Vietnam statistical office, in the period of 09 - 13 March, 2020. This was a return visit, since Vietnam experts already had the opportunity to have an insight in IST concept, during their prior visit to SORS.

The online meeting, considering the memorandum of understanding and cooperation agreed and signed between the State Committee of the Republic of Uzbekistan on Statistics SORS, was held on April 17, 2020.

Due to SORS intention to present and expand its work and experience in using and developing IST, the online meeting with colleagues from Vietnam statistics took place on the July 2, 2020. The topic regards new stuff implemented in IST, since we already made collaboration with Vietnam statistics and organizing our return visit to Vietnam statistics, considering a prior study visit of colleagues from Vietnam statistics to SORS, as well.

The second IST Winter School - Metadata-driven data integration concept, Statistical Business Register (SBR) and Data visualization was held at the Majestic Hotel, as well as on the premises of the Statistical Office of the Republic of Serbia, from 10th to 14th of February, under the auspices of GOPA Worldwide Consultants.