Ms. Nuray Karaibrahim, Head of Government Accounts Group at Turkish Statistical Institute, shares her story about attending the learning event organized by the CEF that aimed to bring up the importance of quality data for the policy-making process. At the workshop, delivered under the FISR project, participants actively discussed the importance of reliable fiscal statistics and reporting, and the link between accounting and fiscal data. The main objective of the workshop was to address the topics of institutional interrelations in fiscal policymaking, necessary information for formulation of policies, and the role of international standards for comparable fiscal reporting. Ms. Karaibrahim gave us some reflections after returning to her institution and discussing the event highlights with her colleagues:

“I participated at the “How Good Data Improves the Quality of Fiscal Policies and Documents” workshop, organized in Ljubljana. At the workshop, we explained why accounting data is not enough for policy decisions in terms of the expectations of both national and international users. In this scope, the roles, importance and systematic linkages of the GFS and EDP statistics, EU semester, fiscal transparency and fiscal rule were presented, including useful country experiences.

Discussing the above mentioned topics was useful due to various reasons. First of all, knowing these relationships brings awareness about what we are part of in this field. It also provided insight into which institution or what documents should be coordinated for the effectiveness and accuracy of our work. Trainings and meetings that have methodological or limited framework on this issue usually do not provide such facilities. Having this in mind, comprehensive coverage of the workshop, sharing experiences and thinking together as a group gave me different perspectives on challenges occurring at my work.

Therefore, after I returned, I have contacted the people and units I cooperate with and informed them about this program and its main outcomes. Additionally, I reviewed the documents I have used in my work. Sharing experiences is especially significant because this type of training offers important additional capacity for candidate countries like us that have limited training opportunities on fiscal data. Candidate countries often have similar problems with these issues and can develop different approaches for resolving them. Case studies, examples from other institutions and their original processes that I learned about at the CEF can be alternatives to improve our systems.

I would like to thank the CEF for the excellent organization of the workshop, new ideas and beautiful memories.”