The Organic Law Nº 45/2013 of 16/06/2013 – is the law on the organization of statistical activities in Rwanda (replacing the old Organic Law Nº 01/2005 of 14/02/2000), NISR is designated as the coordinator of NSS.
NSS Coordination through National Strategies for the Development of Statistics: To serve its purpose effectively, NSS requires strategic and coherent planning, bringing together various stakeholders towards achieving the shared goal of better statistics. Articulating this, a comprehensive strategy document, aimed at development of statistics in the national context, identified also as the National Strategy for the Development of Statistics (NSDS) has proven to be of critical importance in this background.
The first National Strategy for the Development of Statistics (NSDS1) in Rwanda, was designed and developed to serve as a framework for the programs, projects and activities of the National Statistical System (NSS) during the period 2009-2014 with the aim of providing relevant, quality, timely and accessible statistics, in a more efficient and coherent manner, needed for evidence-based policy and decision-making.
The second NSDS (NSDS2) covered the period of five years from 2014/2015 to 2018/2019. It strengthend the work done under NSDS1 and helped continuing the development of the National Statistical System (NSS), towards preparing it to respond to the statistical requirements anticipated for a typical middle-income country by 2020. This enableed NSS to further present a comprehensive and accurate picture of the Rwandan socio-economic and environmental fabric, improve the implementation of evidence-based policy-making and contribute to the promotion of dialogue and scientific research. The strategy helped also to ensure that produced statistical data are reliable, coherent, and effective in monitoring variables, measuring trends and producing indicators.
The third NSDS (NSDS3) is a product of intensive research and consultations. It aims not only at coordinating all statistical activities in Rwanda during the period of 2019/2020-2023/2024, but also at providing general information about the journey of statistical development in Rwanda since 2005, and a better understanding of statistical needs of various development programs at national, regional, continental and global levels. These are mainly the first National Strategy for Transformation (NST 1), Rwanda Vision 2050, the SDGs, EAC Vision 2050 and AU Agenda 2063 by highliting the need, role and responsibility of each sector. NSDS3 brings on innovative initiative such as the use Big Data analytics and Data Science as mentioned by the Data Revolution Policy whose implementation is also coordinated by NISR through the department of Data Revolution and Big Data. It was created to promote and build capabilities to laveraging Big Data as another source of official statistics in addition to existing sources including surveys and censuses.
NSS Coordination through tools (Compendium, guidelines and manuals): In addition to National Strategies for the Development of Statistics, NISR ensures that NSS members use at most same concepts and definitions for the production of statistics. In that context, useful documents were developped and published for public use. These are for instance: Guidelines for Quality Assessment of Administrative Data, the Compendium of Statistical Concepts and Definitions, the The Rwanda Classification Manual -- Customized International Standard Classification for Occupation (ISCO -08), the The Rwanda Classification Manual -- Customized International Standard Classification of all Economic Activities (ISIC, Rev.4), etc.
NSS Coordination through information sharing and capacity building: For an effective and efficient NSS coordination, NISR ensures that NSS members have the same understanding and updated information of statistical matters by establishing regular communication frameworks and platforms including seminars, workshops and trainings around different topics related to production, dissemination and use of statistics for evidence based planning, monitoring, evaluation and decision making. These events are organised at the NISR training center, or by outreach workshops.