We are very pleased to announce that the 3rd OECD World Forum on “Statistics, Knowledge and Policy” will be held in Busan , Korea on 27-30 October 2009. This World Forum, focuses on Charting Progress, Building Visions, Improving Life will attract high level participants with a mixture of politicians and policy makers, opinion leaders, Nobel laureates, statisticians, academics, journalists and representatives of civil society from many countries. Click here to REGISTER.

The Forum will focus on three major questions: What does progress mean for our societies?; What are the new paradigms to measure progress?; and How can there be better policies within these new paradigms to foster the progress of our societies? The current economic crisis makes these questions even more important and the answers more urgent. To review the Preliminary Agenda (PDF version).

There are will be over 40 sessions on interesting topics such as ‘Measuring time use and Wellbeing’, ‘Measuring and addressing the Vulnerability of our Societies’, ‘Childhood Wellbeing’ and ‘Keeping Policy Makers Accountable’.

Some of the confirmed speakers include:

Bader Omar Al-Dafa, Under Secretary-General of the UN, Executive Secretary of UN-ESCWA
Fabrizio Barca, Director General, Ministry of Economy and Finance, Italy
Ohm Collins Chabane, Minister in The Presidency, South Africa
Juan Díez-Nicolás, President of ASEP, Spain
Amir Dossal, Executive Director of the UN Office for Partnerships
John Evans, General Secretary of Trade Union Advisory Council to the OECD (TUAC) J_ ean-Paul Fitoussi, President of the Observatoire français des conjonctures économiques, Science Po
David Gruen, Executive Director, Macroeconomic Group, The Treasury, Australia
Angel Gurría, Secretary General of the OECD
Oh-Seok Hyun, President, Korea Development Institute, KDI
Katsuji Imata, Deputy Secretary General of CIVICUS
Jeni Klugman, Director of the UNDP Human Development Report Office
Tae-shin Kwon, Minister, Prime Minister’s Office, Korea
Lord Richard Layard, London School of Economics
Yanghee Lee, Chair of the UN Commission on the Rights of the Child
Ahmed Lahlimi Alami, High Commissioner for Planning, Morocco
Denise Lievesley, President of the international Statistical Institute
Antonio Marzano, President, National Economic and Labour Council (CNEL)
Geoff Mulgan, Director of the Young Foundation, UK
Mark Orkin, Director General, South African Management Development Institute, SAMDI
Pier Carlo Padoan, Deputy Secretary-General, OECD
Roger Ricafort, Director, Oxfam Hong Kong
Sergey Stephashin, Chairman of the Accounts Chamber of the Russian Federation
Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, Columbia University, New York
Danilo Türk, President of Slovenia
Anders Wijkman, Vice-President of the Club of Rome
Insill Yi, Commissioner, Statistics Korea
Soogil Young, President, National Strategy Institute (NSI), Korea

The 3rd World Forum is organised in the context of the OECD-hosted Global Project on “Measuring the Progress of Societies” (see www.oecd.org/progress), launched to implement the Istanbul Declaration, which affirmed the need to measure and foster the progress of societies, and was signed by the United Nations, the European Commission, the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, the OECD and the World Bank, among others at the end of the 2nd OECD World Forum.