The Country-level Advocacy Toolkit aims to help NSS managers and statisticians in developing countries start their own advocacy work and to demonstrate the advantages of planning advocacy systematically. It gathers, in a single package, advocacy methodology, tools, tips and messages.

As there are many different ways to conceptualize advocacy and no internationally agreed definition, it is essential to share a common definition of advocacy. “Advocacy is pleading for, defending or recommending an idea before key people” in order to obtain change. Whenever change is sought, advocacy is concerned.

It is also important to have a clear understanding of the differences between advocacy and other related concepts, such as communication, dissemination, lobbying. Communication is the mere process by which information is exchanged and as such, is the umbrella concept. Data dissemination is about providing and promoting access to statistical products. Lobbying includes all attempts to influence organized groups. Governments often define and regulate organized group lobbying.

The Toolkit deals with statistical advocacy at country-level. It focuses on statistical advocacy as a means to convince policy-makers, civil society, Media, NGOs and representatives of multilateral and bilateral agencies in developing countries of the importance of statistics in the wider context of development and, in particular, of the necessity for developing countries to have a well-prepared, adequately funded and succesfully implemented National Strategy for the Development of Statistics (NSDS). The NSDS is both a product and a process aimed at improving the NSS.

The product is a document which provides an assessment of the National Statistical System (NSS) and converts statistical priorities into a detailed but flexible work program over a 5-10 year period. As a process, it includes three main inter-linked stages, namely the preliminary, design and implementation. It helps break the “vicious circle” of weak production of statistics and, as such, appears as one of the main opportunities for statistical advocacy, in particular at its design stage. Every opportunity should be taken to show how the implementation of the NSDS will contribute to statistical development in the country and therefore to development itself.

With the target dates set for the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the widespread implementation of Poverty Reduction Strategies (PRSPs), statistical advocacy is all the more relevant.

A large part of effective advocacy depends on the relationships that advocates develop with decision-makers and other key audiences. The stronger the ties of trust and mutual support between advocates and audiences, the more effective those advocates will be. Often you can do together what no one can do alone. Building an advocacy network with all the partners (policy-makers, statisticians) will be a challenging yet rewarding initiative.

But where does country-level advocacy stand and on which levels does it operate? The toolkit provides assistance to NSS managers and statisticians in developing countries advocating to specific targets.

At country-level, the targeted audiences are:

1. Policy-makers in developing countries
   Prime Minister, Minister in charge of statistics, Government “spokesperson”, Finance/Economy ministry, Rural development ministry, Education Ministry, Health and Social Affairs ministry, Fishing ministry, Labor ministry, Planning ministry, Agriculture ministry, Trade ministry, PRSP coordinators, NSDS coordinators, Parliamentarians, Ambassadors.
   
   Change: policy-makers are convinced of the advantages of the NSDS and allocate a bigger proportion of their national budgets to the implementation of the NSDS and scale-up support to statistical capacity building.


2. Civil society, media, NGOs in developing countries
   Change: the civil society recognizes the importance of statistics and collaborates more easily during surveys and in lobbying government.


3. Multilateral and bilateral representatives in developing countries
   European Union representative, World Bank representative, IMF representative, Chief of cooperation representative, UN representative.
   
   Change: representatives recognize that the use of better statistics improves development and they allocate resources, to support statistical development.