Services offered
The purpose of Statistics Sweden’s International Consulting Office is to provide qualified statistical consulting services through transfer of know-how within its areas of competence worldwide outside the EU on a cost recovery basis. The consultancies cover all aspects relevant for planning, production and dissemination of statistics.
Working model
SCB twinning/Institutional Cooperation
SCB twinning is a mode of cooperation that ICO has been using since the beginning of the 1980s. SCB twinning means a long-term cooperation with a sister organisation in another country. The cooperation fosters close professional ties between the institutions as well as between experts in the cooperating countries. The SCB twinning arrangement ensures the recipient institution of access to experts in all domains of statistics.
In an SCB twinning arrangement, transfer of knowledge and skills is a given priority in order to permit the recipient institution to build its capacity to carry out the work without assistance. Sustainability is the keyword.
Some basic features of our long-term cooperation model are the provision of:
- one or more long-term resident consultants for local project coordination, management support and input of expert knowledge
- short-term consultants for input of expert knowledge
- a project coordinator at the ICO, who is responsible for contacts between recipient, project and SCB and for recruitment of consultants
- study visits to Sweden and/or other countries
- training courses mainly in statistics, IT and English
Regional projects
In addition to national projects, regional projects are aimed for a number of countries in a region. For example, ICO has two regional projects in Western Balkans regarding gender statistics and statistical methodology.
Funding
ICO has an annual turnover of about US$ 8 million. The majority of our projects are funded by Sida (Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency). International organisations and individual countries are also customers of our services.
We are also taking part in international consortiums established for the implementation of projects funded by the EU, the WB and others.
Countries
Currently we have ongoing projects in about 18 countries all over the globe. There are also some projects with a regional approach for regional training and competence development.
ICO staff and consultants
ICO has twelve staff members responsible for the administration, coordination and development of its international consulting services. ICO uses consultants from the entire Statistics Sweden, and when required also external consultants, to provide qualified assistance for statistical capacity building.
Some Key indicators 2012
- Number of projects: 20
- Number of countries: 18
- Number of missions: 260 (short term)
- Number of consultants: 125 (short term)
- Number of study visits: 13 (study groups)