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Barents statisticians joining forces

Leaders of statistical offices are ready to engage in Barents cooperation. From left Georgy Oksenoyt (Rosstat), Ari Türkko (Statistics Finland) and Olav Ljones (Statistics Norway).

The national statistical offices in the Barents Region are taking the first steps towards establishing a permanent cross-border statistical cooperation.

Location

“Comparable statistics across countries and regions is a prerequisite in a globalized society”, Deputy Head of Statistics Norway Olav Ljones underlined in last week’s Barents Border Dialogue Conference. “We need more international cooperation”, he highlighted in a meeting with colleagues from the Finnish, Swedish and Russian statistical services.

With the meeting, the four statistical offices took a first step towards a formalized Barents statisitical cooperation.

“It is high time to start up a cross-border cooperation in the region”, Ljones said, adding that a permanent structure under the Barents umbrella should be established. He believes existing data on regional populations, migration, trade, investments, transportation, tourism and environment can serve as a basis for joint action.

Present at the conference were also prominent representatives of the Russian State Statistical Service (Rosstat), as well as Statistics Finland and Statistics Sweden. According to Vice President of Rosstat, Georgy Oksenoyt, the four countries have a major cooperation potential within the field of open data. He also believes that the countries should be able to jointly develop database functionality.

The Barents Border Dialogue Conference assembled not only representatives of the four countries’ statistical services, but also a researchers and journalists from the region, information from conference organizer Norwegian Barents Secretariat reads.