The Jordanian and American Statistical Organizations sign a Memorandum of Understanding

The Department of Statistics of Jordan and the U.S. Bureau of Census affiliated to the American Department of Commerce have signed a Memorandum of Understanding on Thursday, 21st February 2008 in Washington in the presence of the Deputy Ambassador of Jordan in Washington Mr. Walid Al-Hadid .  It was signed by the Director General of Statistics, Dr. Gazi Shbaikat from the Jordanian side and Dr. Steve Murdock, Director of the Bureau of Census from the American side.

       Dr. Shbaikat said that signing of this memorandum is consistent with the Royal Designation Letter, which has stressed on the importance of strengthening, consolidating and developing Jordan's international and bilateral relations. It is anticipated that it will have a positive impact on Jordan and shall reflect its output on our partners and our economic performance.

       On his part, Dr. Murdock emphasized that this Memo came upon the desire of the two parties to consolidate the bilateral cooperation between the Jordanian Department of Statistics and the U.S Bureau of Census in the field of developing and promoting the professional statistics by enhancing the scientific method, consolidating its methodologies and the standards of its improvement and development. The aim is to achieve their common objectives so that statistics become an effective tool in both countries for formulating the development plans and decision-making.

        It is worthy to note that this memorandum covers a wide range of cooperation fields including organizing the work, methodologies of censuses and surveys and drafting of reports on economic, social and demographic statistics, in addition to employing the automated technology such as applied data, processing and analysis and statistical data compilation and publication.

       This memorandum also provides for focusing on strengthening the statistical capacity of the employees through training courses in statistical methodology, data collection, processing and analysis. In addition to that, the memorandum calls for use of the latest techniques in statistical evaluation and using the administrative records as a source for statistics.

       As for the forms of cooperation between the two parties, this will be achieved through the exchange of specialized statisticians, experts and trainees, as well as through the exchange of statistical data in the economic, social and demographic areas while maintaining the confidentiality of the raw data, either concerning the individuals or economic establishments. Another form is through holding joint seminars, conferences, lectures and training courses in addition to exchange of research ideas, results, experience and preparing joint researches on statistical methodologies.

        A meeting was held between the two parties on the sideline of signing the Memorandum of Understanding, where some priority issues for the Department of Statistics have been discussed such as the establishments’ records, construction of the input-output tables, sources of administrative registers, quality control as well as some other topics relevant to the administrative and organizational fields.