AITRS participated in the regional workshop on "Sound Institutional Environment, Cooperation, Dialogue and Partnerships for the Production and Utilization of SDG Indicators" organized by the Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) on 6-8 February 2018 in Tunis. This workshop comes within the framework of efforts to strengthen the capacities of Arab countries and to support them in the mechanism of institutional measures that help the production and use of sustainable development goals indicators. The deliberation of this workshop led to several recommendations, including:

• Work on the adoption of the general statistical law, taking into account the peculiarities of statistical work in the country. ESCWA will translate the text of this general law into Arabic and submit it to countries for study and opinion,

• Adopt the peer review mechanism to determine the level of the statistical activity effectiveness and identify the shortcomings that must be work on to ensure that it is consistent with developments at the international level,

 • The possibility of preparing a blog of good practices, specific for the in Arab countries based on the fundamental principles of official statistics of the United Nations and consistent with the rest of the statistical blogs and conventions adopted at the country level (European Blog of Statistical Practice, blog of the neighboring countries of the European South statistical practices, the African Charter of Statistics),

• Call for the establishment of a national structure for institutional coordination among all those involved in the national statistical system (national structures, civil society, the private sector, university institutions), as is the experience of some states in establishing national statistical councils,

• Support coordination between national structures and international organizations in order to build a cohesive and coherent national statistical system that facilitates consultation and control of roles for all components for enabling the production of inputs that responds to the needs of all categories of users, especially in relation to the new needs of sustainable development objectives,

• Call for close interrelationship between sustainable development goals and statistical programs and national strategies for a  consensus on indicators that can be set up and necessary to be included in these programs and determine the responsibilities of each intervenor in the inputs related to these indicators,

• Provide necessary statistical training, ensure financial and human resources , share expenses between national stakeholders, search for sustainable financing through international cooperation, and commit the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) in this regard to send applications form to donors,

• The importance of establishing units within the statistical agencies that are concerned with the quality of data produced as well as monitoring the quality of the data of the rest of the components of the system in order to enhance users’ confidence. The work of quality units based on ensuring compliance to the basic principles of statistical activity,

• Strengthen the use of administrative sources in the production of statistical input to reduce survey and their cost and to adopt of statistical and meta data exchange (SDMX) to ensure their consistency and ease of exchange.