The PM has issued instructions to the Planning Commission and other government departments to set up a system for independent evaluation of its flagship programs. The government is presently investing large sums to enhance education, health and rural employment, and this step will mark a further progress in this process. The PM recently had a meeting with the commission, the finance ministry and the department of statistics, instructing their mutual cooperation concerning these social sectors.

Dr Singh also informed that the Govt. is considering to make all non-strategic information public. He reported on Tuesday, right after inaugurating the national conference of state ministers in charge of statistics, a proactive policy of disclosure will be in keeping with the spirit of the Right to Information Act. Information collected at huge cost, with the tax payers money, should be made available to the general public without their having to ask for it.?

He further added, “At present, the evaluation function is done by several wings of the government and cannot be called independen”.

The data collection process was at the stage of collapsing, revealed National Statistical Commission chairman Suresh Tendulkar. He further informed, “The virtual neglect and the low priority accorded to recording, storage, retrieval and processing of the flow of data from periodic, statutory or other returns have resulted in official data becoming suspect in terms of reliability and completeness”.

The need for increase in evolving alternate methods for generating industrial data was felt by those present in the conference. This situation has arisen due to massive upsurge in entrepreneurial activity over the past one-and-a-half decades. Other than this, the conference also tried to look at various methods of bettering credibility of official statistics and betterment in institutional state statistical system.