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Contact:
RoseMarie Harris
Tuesday, June 5, 2007 – The Government of St. Lucia is pleased to share
with the public, information on HelenInfo, St. Lucia’s adaptation of DevInfo
5.0, which was launched on April 13 2007. HelenInfo is essentially a mechanism
to monitor statistics and indicators and to enable dissemination to users. The
stimulus of HelenInfo is a joint collaborative arrangement instituted primarily
by the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Secretariat and UNICEF to strengthen
statistical capacity in the area of Social Statistics in the Region, a critical
factor being access to data by users for decision-making, policy formulation and
research. The development of HelenInfo also benefited from substantial
assistance received from the European Commission and UNDP.
DevInfo is a statistical tool that allows tracking of baseline data relating to
the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) which was initially introduced by UNICEF
and for which a number of training sessions have been organized in the region by
UNICEF and UNDP under the leadership of CARICOM.
Its adaptation, HelenInfo includes a small publication and an installation CD,
that also provides statistics on inter-census demographic trends, the Millennium
Development Goals (MDGs) and the local socio-economic environment. The package
uses the DevInfo mapping technology to geographically reference a large number
of the indicators by sub-national administrative districts.
Developing Helen Info was quite challenging
According to the government of St. Lucia, the process of developing Helen Info
was challenging in that it involved the coordination and consolidation of data
collection and compilation efforts from a large number and variety of private
and public sector sources. Nevertheless, the process offered the opportunity to
fortify the inter-agency collaboration that is most crucial to the efficient,
relevant and sustainable provision of domestic indicators on social, economic
and human development.
Improvements to be made
The HelenInfo team, comprise members from the Central Statistics Office, the
Department of Economic Affairs in the Ministry of Finance and the corporate
planning units of the Ministries of Education, Agriculture, Social
Transformation and other relevant government ministries. They have continued to
work on the improvement and updating of the HelenInfo package. Planned
improvements include the introduction of geo-referenced data at the settlement
level and a web-based application of the HelenInfo software.
The team expresses its sincere gratitude to the numerous individuals and
agencies throughout the domestic, regional and international communities that
have contributed to the success of the HelenInfo project thus far.
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