The Heads of Planning and Statistics (HOPS) convene every two or three years (depending on availability of resources) bringing together the most senior officials responsible for the production and use of statistics at national levels around the Pacific region. The role of HOPS is to provide senior-level strategic oversight, guidance, recommendations and decisions on statistical matters of importance to the region. These recommendations are then, through active cooperation and collaboration between SPC and the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat (PIFS), incorporated into a standing agenda item paper on statistical governance and financing which is presented each year at the annual Forum Economic Ministers Meeting (FEMM).
HOPS provides a regular institutional interface between National Statistics Offices (NSOs), senior national planning and policy analysts, development partners and SPC to build and sustain collaborative relationships which are crucial to the successful implementation of the Ten Year Pacific Statistics Strategy 2011–2020 (TYPSS) and other statistics initiatives in the Pacific.
In the current period the emphasis has been on institutionalising the new regional statistical governance structure, developing a coordinated five-year core statistics collection programme across the region, strengthening statistics dissemination and building knowledge products to assist PICTs to develop evidence-based policy-making.
The most recent meeting of HOPS was held in November 2017 and the next meetings is scheduled for around November 2020. This next meeting is expected to consider a review of Phase 3 (2018–2020) of the Ten Year Pacific Statistics Strategy (2011–2020), and make recommendations for a successor strategy taking the statistics in the region through to 2030.