Happy New Year to all our members and friends
Happy New Year to all our members and friends. I hope everyone had a break over the holidays and you are all keeping well in these COVID times. All our hopes are for good health and the resumption of as near to normal activities we can have in the next twelve months.
ISI’s new website
I hope you have now all had the chance to explore our new website. Many of the improvements are invisible to us: we have moved to a new web management system. This is making it much easier to manage and edit content, and provides a very solid base for adding new functionality as we need it. More evident is that the new website has a much cleaner feel to it and looks more modern, with a better use of colour. We have a Latest news carousel on the front page and the pages are generally shorter and clearer. I hope you like the new calendar, and moving the sub menus to the side will make things easier to navigate. Many thanks to our webmaster for the hard work.
Launch of our new Strategic Priorities
The New Year is also marked by the launch of our new Strategic Priorities 2022-25. The consultation with members and Council confirmed that our four headline priorities should not change. However, beneath these broad headings, the challenges and opportunities have moved on, and there are new activities that ISI will be taking forward over the next four years:
- Encourage Statistical communications and networking
Includes WSC 2023 in Ottawa; our new website – now delivered; developing regional networks for members, and online engagement facilities for Associations and Special Interest groups; together with continuous on-line courses.
- Increase the public voice of Statistics
Members groups will identify some of the issues to be worked on, leading to draft position statements for discussion by members at the WSC; wider collaboration on data science; and more active engagement at the UN.
- Develop Statistical capability
We are already exploring the World Bank Global facility as a source of funding for our statistical capacity building activities, including workshops and attendance to statistical conferences. We will look to ways of supporting national statistical societies; and to ways of setting up a mentoring network.
- Secure financial stability
We continue to look for ways to expand our membership base and attract more sponsorship income for the WSC.
Search for a new Director
The New Year will also see Ada’s retirement, and we are working with Executive Search agency Stanton Chase on finding a replacement. Look out for an announcement on this imminently.
Here’s to a successful and productive New Year!
Steve
