Statistical performance indicator

The SPI overall score is a composite score measuring country performance across five pillars: data use, data services, data products, data sources, and data infrastructure. The new Statistical Performance Indicators (SPI) will replace the Statistical Capacity Index (SCI), which the World Bank has regularly published since 2004. Although the goals are the same, to offer a better tool to measure the statistical systems of countries, the new SPI framework has expanded into new areas including in the areas of data use, administrative data, geospatial data, data services, and data infrastructure. The SPI provides a framework that can help countries measure where they stand in several dimensions and offers an ambitious measurement agenda for the international community.

Aggregation method:

Weighted average

Statistical concept and methodology:

Methodology: Weighted average of all statistical performance indicators. Scores range from 0-100 with 100 representing the best score. Statistical concept(s): Composite Multi-dimensional Index

Development relevance:

The new Statistical Performance Indicators (SPI) will replace the Statistical Capacity Index (SCI), which the World Bank has regularly published since 2004. Although the goals are the same, to offer a better tool to measure the statistical systems of countries, the new SPI framework has expanded into new areas including in the areas of data use, administrative data, geospatial data, data services, and data infrastructure. The SPI provides a framework that can help countries measure where they stand in several dimensions and offers an ambitious measurement agenda for the international community.

Limitations and exceptions:

Like all cross-country benchmarking exercises the HCI has limitations.

Components of the HCI such as stunting and test scores are measured only infrequently in some countries, and not at all in others. Other components, like child and adult survival rates, are imprecisely estimated in countries where vital registries are incomplete or non-existent. Data on enrollment rates needed to estimate expected years of school often have many gaps and are reported with significant lags. As a result, the HCI for a country may rely on measures that are somewhat dated that do not reflect the most up-to-date state of human capital in a country.

The test score harmonization exercise draws on test scores that come from different international testing programs and converts these into common units. However, the age of test takers and the subjects covered vary across testing programs. As a result, harmonized scores may reflect differences in sampling and cohorts participating in tests (Liu and Steiner-Khamsi 2020). Moreover, test scores may not accurately reflect the quality of the whole education system in a country to the extent that tests-takers are not representative of the population of all students. Reliable measures of the quality of tertiary education do not yet exist, despite the importance of higher education for human capital in a rapidly changing world. The index also does not explicitly capture other important aspect of human capital, such as noncognitive skills, although they may contribute directly and indirectly to human capital formation (see, for example, Lundberg 2018).

One objective of the HCI is to call attention to these data shortcomings and to galvanize action to remedy them. Improving data will take time. In the interim, and recognizing these limitations, the HCI should be interpreted with caution. The HCI provides rough estimates of how current education and health will shape the productivity of future workers and not a finely graduated measure of small differences between countries.