Abstract

The LISA 2020 Program was started with the vision to promote statistical and data science capacity building in developing countries by creating a strong network of statistics and data science collaboration laboratories (“stat labs”). These stat labs worked with the objectives of becoming Engines for Development by training the next generation of collaborative statisticians and data scientists. Collaboration within the network was aimed at the coming together of researchers, data producers, and decision-makers to make a positive impact on society. Another goal of the network was to teach short courses and workshops to improve statistical skills and data literacy as widely as possible. The culmination of all the hard work and dedication of the LISA team is seem in the massive growth in the number of LISA Stat labs across many nations in Africa, India, and Pakistan. In the present day, the network has grown to 35 full member stat labs, 6 transitional labs approaching full membership, and 7 proposed stat labs that are in the early application stages with many more interested and learning more about the network. With such a robust network, the LISA 2020 Program encouraged the existing stat labs to improve their operations by adapting best practices learned from one another. The initiatives also seek to ensure the sustainability of the network itself and the various individual member stat labs. In this IPS, we wish to present some of these sustainability experiments and highlight the insights obtained from carrying them out. The Stat labs had all taken quite an innovative approaches in designing and conducting these experiment and it is our intention to showcase them to the entire network on the august platform of World Statistics Congress. Some of the labs have dedicated their time to setting up one on one sessions with a statisticians, like "An hour with a Statistician". Whereas in another, there is a long term project dedicated to educating and training women to participate in the Statistician cohort. Yet another interesting project undertaken is to create policy recommendations for increasing election participation. In this session, participants from different geographical locations, but all part of the big LISA family will talk about what they have done so far and how they intend to encourage Statistics education and to support the practice of transforming data to insights.