Joint meeting between UN-GGIM: Europe and the Conference of European Statisticians (CES)

A joint meeting between UN-GGIM: Europe and the Conference of European Statisticians (CES) was held in Geneva, Switzerland, on the 20th June.

The Common Day highlighted the importance of integrating geospatial and statistical data to enhance national and international development programmes. It recognised the important opportunity in drafting the post-2030 Development Agenda and strongly encouraged the geospatial and statistical communities to actively contribute to its development to maximise the impact that geospatial and statistical data have in national and global development programmes.

Member States committed to sharing their experiences and lessons learned, particularly regarding emerging technologies like generative AI, sought opportunities for collaboration. They also supported data interoperability approaches to deliver a unified approach towards data integration.

The meeting concluded with unanimous support to extend the collaboration agreement between the UNECE CES and UN-GGIM: Europe for a further three years to 2026. Member States requested that the UN-GGIM: Europe Executive Committee and the CES Bureau discuss ways to operationalise this cooperation and support closer collaboration between national statistical and geospatial agencies. The renewed agreement, focuses on capacity development especially in areas of common interest such as data integration, SDGs, DEI, population censuses and innovative technologies.