Monitoring and Reporting Plan

Through the Ministerial Declaration to ‘Get Every One in the Picture’ in Asia and the Pacific, Governments made a commitment to focus their efforts to improve civil registration and vital statistics (CRVS) systems over the CRVS decade period of 2015-2024. To guide Governments and development partners to focus and organize efforts towards improving CRVS systems across the region, the Regional Action Framework establishes 3 goals, 15 nationally set targets, 7 action areas as well as 8 implementation steps. One of the implementation steps is to develop and implement a plan for monitoring and reporting on achievement of the targets, including on reporting to the ESCAP.

Ongoing monitoring of the CRVS system is essential for achieving a well-functioning system. National leaders, and those responsible for implementing improvements to CRVS systems, need information to monitor progress and inform decisions. Setting national targets is one step in the overall national approach to improving CRVS systems, but ongoing monitoring on the performance of the CRVS system and progress with system improvements are also essential.

In countries where parts of the CRVS systems are decentralized, setting the targets and collecting data needed to monitor them should ideally be overseen by a leading national body. This agency or mechanism should establish the monitoring standards and guidelines to be applied uniformly across the system, as is the recommended approach for all aspects of operating decentralized CRVS systems. This will add a level of complexity to the process and further emphasize the importance of strong coordination and communication between various parts of the system.