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to put in place independent evaluators for its flagship programmes, such as the National Rural Employee Guarantee Scheme, Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan and National Rural Health Mission. This is being done to ensure that the evaluation of these programmes are more accurate and credible.

Inaugurating the national conference of state ministers in-charge of statistics, in the capital on Tuesday, prime minister Manmohan Singh said, "There is need for a much stronger system of independent evaluation that will report on the progress of the major flagship programmes. This will not only monitor progress against targets but also suggest ways and means of improving performance to produce better results".

He said the government had "dramatically" increased the scale of funding for flagship programmes in the areas of education health and rural employment. Independent evaluation of these programmes was, therefore, needed, based on data generated by the government and others.

At present, the function of evaluation is dispersed over several wings of the government. The ministries in-charge of the programme do some evaluation, but this cannot be called independent. The programme evaluation organisation of the Planning Commission also does ex-post facto evaluation. The government has asked the Planning Commission, finance ministry, and the department of statistics to collectively work out details for setting up such an office. He said the country needed development and research institutes coordinated at the apex by a knowledge institution.

"Ideally, the government should be at an arm’s length from the process of independent evaluation and we should make full use of common talent pool which exists in our universities, management or research institutions and also our NGOs," he added. The government is also considering putting all non-strategic information in the public domain under the Right to Information Act. Information will be made available to the public without their having to ask for it. "The government is often called a good collector of information, but a poor user of it. It is also a poor presenter of information. Information presented must be organised from the potential user's point of view."

Singh lamented over the poor quality of industrial and agricultural data. He said alternative methods of generating industrial data would have to be evolved as data flows for industrial statistics had weakened considerably. New and innovative ways have to be evolved to tackle the problems with agricultural data, which relies heavily on the old land revenue system, he said.

"With the weakening of the land revenue system, the estimates of land use, which are central to any estimate of agricultural production, have become increasingly unreliable," he said.

Speaking on the occasion, minister of state for statistics and programme implementation G K Wasan said that new Collections of Statistics Bill, introduced in the Rajya Sabha, would significantly facilitate data collection at all levels of the government. The government, he said, was considering a proposal to to strengthen state statistical systems through a centrally-sponsored scheme in the 11th Plan at an estimated cost of Rs 705 crore. He said the government would establish a National Academy of Statistical Administration to upgrade the skills and knowledge base of statisticians.