CENTROESTAD considering DDI as a regional standard

The III Meeting of the Central-America Statistical Commission (CENTROESTAD) of the Central America Integration System (SICA) was held in San Salvador (El Salvador) on September 1-2, 2010 . The meeting was hosted by Mr. Glenn Avilez, Pro-Tempore President of CENTROESTAD and head of the National Statistical Office (NSO) of Belize. The meeting was attended by Directors and high level representatives from the national statistics offices of Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Dominican Republic, Panama and Belize. Representatives from the Nicaragua were not able to participate.

The NSO of El Salvador presented a proposal to consider having an official agreement of all NSOs members of CENTROESTAT, to adopt the DDI microdata documentation standard promoted by the Accelerated Data Program (ADP) as a Regional Standard. The proposal also suggested that the activities needed for the consolidation and expansion of good practices and standards of microdata documentation be included in the Regional Strategy for Development of Statistics (ERDE by its Spanish Acronym) currently in preparation process.