The CountrySTAT Philippines
The CountrySTAT is a web-based system that integrates national food and agricultural statistical information to ensure harmonization of national data and metadata collections for analysis and policy making. In recognition of the existing and potential uses of the CountrySTAT, the Philippine Statistical System (PSS) through the Philippine Statistical Association (PSA) has taken on the challenge of establishing the CountrySTAT Philippines. This has been made possible through a Letter of Agreement between the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the PSA by which funds were provided by FAO in order to implement the project “Strengthening the National Statistical Systems of Selected Countries in the Asian and Pacific Region”. One major component of the Project is the installation of the CountrySTAT which calls for the development of the metadata system. The preparation and publication of metadata is another major component of the Project.
Relation to FAOSTAT
The CountrySTAT Philippines shall serve as a complementary system to FAOSTAT. The CountrySTAT outputs are designed to load easily into FAOSTAT. This process or flow improves FAOSTAT's capacity to provide high quality statistical data at the international level. It also promotes exchanges of data within countries, between countries and between FAO and countries. Following the FAOSTAT framework, the CountrySTAT Philippines shall have statistical data series surrounded by statistical metadata.
As envisioned in the development of this system, data from the CountrySTAT, will be uploaded into FAOSTAT. As such, country contributions to international agriculture and food statistics will arrive from only one source. The CountrySTAT will initiate quality control steps at the country level as part of the FAOSTAT data quality monitoring and evaluation system. The benefits derived from improved national statistical systems will be conveyed to FAOSTAT in the form of high quality data contributions from the countries.
CountrySTAT Philippines Databases
The databases in the CountrySTAT Philippines are organized according to major domains identified by FAO and under two major groups: CountrySTAT Core and CountrySTAT Sub-national. The core data consist of national data shared with FAOSTAT database while the related or subnational data are those with subnational relevance. This arrangement of CountrySTAT Core and Subnational data provide end-users with the possibility of “navigating” through the databases from either geographic or thematic paths.
Metadata for the National Agricultural Statistics in the Philippines
The CountrySTAT system requires the preparation and publication of good metadata. All the databases and statistical tables posted in the CountrySTAT are adequately backed up by metadata.