The 2013 Global Forum on Development (GFD) in Paris was designed to promote a better understanding of what the shifting dynamics of poverty means for policies to be pursued by governments, international organisations and others in the post-2015 world.

Within Session 3, Innovative approaches to measuring poverty, well-being and progress, and implications for statistical capacity development; Session 3.2 was dealing with the statistical capacity development in an emerging post-2015 development agenda. Development goals must reflect the realities and priorities of individual countries, but they also need to be measurable.  This implies that statistical capacity development, which was widely neglected when the MDGs were first designed, should have crucial importance for any follow-up framework. Professor Sicherl discussed the evaluation of the MDG implementation in a new way using Gaptimer MDG Progress Chart.

Professor Sicherl also stated that the issue of “how statisticians can take advantage of innovations in data production and dissemination” has to be examined in the broader context; the innovations should include introducing also statistical measures that are transparent and easily understood by everyone. Time distance measure can present one of such measures that produce knowledge and policy messages in a very understandable way to build both objective and subjective perceptions of the overall degree of inequality. The time distance concept can influence the perception and decisions of people when they are assessing their relative position in their surroundings, in the society and across countries over time. In the information age this additional view of the existing data should be evaluated as an important contribution to the more efficient utilisation of the available information in many fields.