Leadership of NSOs in Developing and LDCs in Asia-Pacific Region

Leadership of NSOs in LDCs and Developing Countries of Asia-Pacific
By: Jousairi Hasbullah

There are at least four characteristics of the institution of NSOs in Developing and LDCs of the Asia-Pacific: inward looking, weak in management and leadership, weak role and positioning of the institutions and, weak knowledges of social changes occuring in the societies.

Traditionally NSOs served only limited data consumers: government planner, small group of university researhers, and other limited number of others. The way of presenting data and indicators were very out of date by printing thick publication, displaying complicated statistical formula which were hardly been understood by non statistician, and very limited effort of promotion. The work was too inward looking.
On the otherhand the world changes very fast. Public being poured by data produced by either NGOs,companies or private research institutions.

The work done with a routine way. Its nature was very linear: preparing questionaire, field guide book, training for trainers and enumerators, data collection, processing and data publications. NSOs look like an isolated institution. This way of doing work lead to weak capacity of management and visioner leadership. NSOs staffs are strong in understanding statistics, but very weak in adapting with the new world, new era, new challenges and new public demands.

The limitations mentioned lead to the weaknesses of the roles and position of NSOs. In several countries in the region, the position of NSOs below the ministerial level which lead to the difficulty of NSO's high rank officials to strongly engage in equal position, with high rank stakeholders. As a consequence, statistics principles: professional, independence, impartiality, confidentiality and professional standard and ethics could not fully be achieved.
All NSOs in developing and LDCs in the region should give a great effort to transform their institution to be of more outward looking, affiliated with all segment of civil societies, strong engagement with media and with all government senior stakeholders. This can be achieved if NSOs  headed by strong leadership with strong attention of the importance of the balance between statistics, changing external environment and leadership mastery.
JSHcenter.
Bandung.27 June 2018
Jousairi Hasbullah