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Cloud for Official Statistics
This publication aims to explore the specific barriers and challenges faced by National Statistical Organisations (NSOs) in adopting cloud technology while also highlighting the experiences and lessons learned from official statistics organisations. By addressing these challenges and leveraging best practices NSOs can effectively navigate the cloud adoption landscape and drive meaningful transformation in their operations. This publication shares the work of experts drawn from research on cloud adoption in organisational contexts.
Cloud security and privacy
NSOs are responsible for a vast array of data that are used for official statistical production and for that purpose only. The statistical business process depends on data about individuals households enterprises municipalities etc. These different entities/statistical units trust the NSO to keep their data safe. There are also legal obligations data protection and statistical acts that NSOs must adhere to and are meant to further ensure the security and privacy of data used for official statistical production.
Background
Cloud computing is growing very rapidly and will soon become the most common IT infrastructure in businesses across the world. Cloud computing is the procurement of computing resources and ranging from infrastructure to software over the internet and (the cloud) to pay only for what is used. Over the years cloud adoption strategies have ranged between cloud-only cloud-first and more recently cloud-smart. The latter recognises that while cloud technology offers many advantages many organisations have good reasons to retain some parts of their legacy on-premises IT infrastructure.
Preface
In recent years numerous official statistics organisations have embarked on a journey to adopt cloud computing. It brings many opportunities to make organisations more efficient and responsive to policy and user needs. Organisations are at quite different stages in their cloud adoption: some are considering cloud computing; some are implementing it; some have already executed important production processes in this environment; and others are already maintaining their cloud environment including a second round of procurement.
Conclusions and recommendations
It is evident from this report that adoption of cloud offers many opportunities and poses many challenges to statistical organisations. Each of the key themes explored provide a holistic view of the issues and capabilities of cloud services. Furthermore it is clearly apparent that there is a desire to increase the utilisation of cloud capabilities gaining benefits from factors such as scalability while also providing greater business value. We learned that enablement factors such as increased central government support and direction can make a statistical organisation’s cloud journey achievable.
Cloud procurement
This chapter aims to provide a set of recommendations relevant to cloud procurement and possible alternatives for each of the topics. While many procurement aspects are addressed in dedicated sections a small number of recommendations stand out and deserve to be demonstrated from the start.
Cloud service and deployment models
Cloud computing has revolutionised the way organisations operate providing flexible and scalable solutions to meet their IT needs. Key aspects of cloud computing are self-service by the customer and automated execution of the self-service requests. Another advantage as well as a challenge is that there are now multiple possibilities of how a cloud solution can be used from a service and deployment perspective.
Acknowledgements
We would like to acknowledge the significant effort and contribution from all the project participants. Producing a high-quality document in addition to delivering on their day-to-day duties is quite a challenge. The success of the UNECE Cloud for Official Statistics Project owes a lot to the engagement professionalism and talents of the following individuals.
Cloud adoption
In the theme of cloud adoption we explore various elements focused around understanding the behaviours that support NSOs’ adoption of cloud technologies. Adoption of cloud technology needs to consider critical elements beyond those of technical implementation by IT teams (whether that be internal IT teams and/or vendors). Many of these critical elements should be addressed before and during the early stages of cloud technology adoption as they will enable a smoother transition.
Learning for Careers
Knowing about the preferences needs and wishes of young people is an important precondition to successful career guidance policies and services. The European Training Foundation (ETF) and the UNICEF Europe and Central Asia Regional Office (ECARO) in collaboration with young people conducted polls and held focus groups to understand the needs of young people aged 14-34 regarding career guidance. The study covered Albania Bosnia and Herzegovina Greece Kosovo Kyrgyzstan Montenegro North Macedonia Romania Serbia Ukraine and Uzbekistan. Young people want to learn for life and career education and guidance that integrates life skills and career learning enables them to do this. Fit-for-purpose career guidance should ideally be: a systematic combination of structured career education programs (as part of curricula throughout formal education to be able to reach whole generations) quality online self-learning and self-help opportunities; and person-centered career guidance service offered outside of school both face-to-face and online.
Executive summary
Knowing about the preferences needs and wishes of young people is an important precondition to successful career guidance policies and services. The European Training Foundation (ETF) and the UNICEF Europe and Central Asia Regional Office (ECARO) in collaboration with young people conducted polls and held focus groups to understand the needs of young people aged 14-34 regarding career guidance. The study covered Albania Bosnia and Herzegovina Greece Kosovo Kyrgyzstan Montenegro North Macedonia Romania Serbia Ukraine and Uzbekistan.
Expectations about future professions and education
While young people are paying more attention to their interests and passions when selecting a career the range of careers that they are considering appears to be limited. We asked young people what type of profession they expect to have at 35 and most respondents mentioned professional careers specifically traditional careers such as teachers doctors or nurses. This is paired with a somewhat unrealistic expectation of educational aspirations with many young people in our consultation aiming for Masters and PhDs.
Conclusions and way forward
Countries need to build well-coordinated and sustainably funded career guidance systems that are responsive to the needs of individuals especially young people to be relevant effective and efficient. The EU should support the countries covered in this report and the whole neighborhood in this endeavor through its instruments given that the scarcity of resources and capacity for building such a systemic approach are key bottlenecks. This would not only support achieving key priorities of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG4 and 8 in particular) but would also be in line with the EU Council Resolution on better integrating lifelong guidance into lifelong learning strategies (2008) which gives a direct mandate to the ETF to “Foster the development of lifelong guidance in third countries”.
The state of play related to career guidance service offer
Effective and efficient career guidance systems should be systematic well-coordinated and cross-sectoral providing seamless lifelong support within a context of stable and appropriate funding enabling all those who require career development support the ability and the right to access it. Obstacles to achieving this system require understanding bottlenecks in both the demand and the supply of career guidance systems.
Acknowledgments
The regional report ‘LEARNING FOR CAREERS: What kinds of career guidance and career education services do young people want in Europe and Central Asia?’ is the result of joint collaboration between the UNICEF Regional Office for Europe and Central Asia (UNICEF ECARO) and the European Training Foundation (ETF).
Foreword
Today’s labor markets are turbulent and undergoing historic disruptions. In the face of accelerated automation green and digital transformations globalisation fluctuating demographics and recovering post-COVID-19 economies the character of work is changing. For many this change brings about increased risks of joblessness uncertainty and precarious employment young people being particularly affected by the current instability. Transitioning from school to work is therefore an ever more critical juncture that has consequences for the future employment well-being and social connectedness of the younger generation. However rapid changes in the demand side of the labor market make decision-making about education training and work all the more difficult.