Tunis – IOM, the UN Migration Agency, this week (3-5/10) trained Libyan officials in migration data management. The officials were from the Directorate for Combatting Illegal Migration (DCIM), Ministries of Foreign Affairs, Labour, the Bureau of Statistics and the departments of Passport Control and Border Points.

The three-day training, held in Tunis and conducted under the project Enhance Lifesaving Operations at Sea by the Libyan Coast Guard funded by the Government of Switzerland, provided the participants with an overview on migrant data collected by IOM Libya’s Displacement Tracking Matrix, the basic and general concepts for proper data management and the best tools to collect them.

“I know that we are only at the beginning of the training but I can already see that there is remarkable work done by the International Organization for Migration in terms of both collecting and putting data into good use,” said Salwa Mohamed Sriti, from the Bureau of Statistics. “One thing we can work on improving is better involvement of locals when collecting information by DTM staff.”

The training also outlined how to set up effective information systems, during which, Franz Prutsch, IOM’s Regional Thematic Specialist on IBM, explained the importance of the chain: input, process and output, in terms of analyzing and using data, the significance of a user-friendly data base and internal networking.

“There’s always data available and ready for use, but it must be processed within a proper context first, so as to make the best sense of it,” said Prutsch.

The training is an initial step towards developing a national Standards of Procedures (SOP) for migration data management with aims to assist all the relevant Libyan directorates to collect and analyze data for future government strategies.

For more information, please contact IOM Libya:
Othman Belbeisi, Tel: +216 29 600 389, Email: obelbeisi@iom.int,  Maysa Khalil, Tel: +216 29 600 388, Email: mkhalil@iom.int