* An extract from Issue 3 of the Newsletter on "Measuring the Progress of Societies".

[Global Project work]
By Enrico Giovannini, Chief Statistician of the OECD and Jon Hall, Global Project Manager

The past few months have been particularly eventful for the Global Project on "Measuring the Progress of Societies". We think that the amount of work underway is a reflection of the continuously increasing interest around the world in looking beyond GDP to reassess societal progress.

President Sarkozy's Commission on "Measuring Economic Performance and Social Progress" was a major addition. The Commission has produced an issues paper (which quotes the Global Project) and is working towards a first interim report. The recent decision by the World Economic Forum to launch a Global Council on "Benchmarking the Progress in Societies" is another welcome development.

The Global Project was formally approved by the OECD's governing Council during the summer and in September we held our first Board meeting. This approval has paved the way to a range of new projects. We have, for instance, begun new research in several areas, including work to measure trust(led by Unicredit) and to develop a handbook on Local Well-being Indicators(led by the Council of Europe).

Promoting discussion on these themes is another important part of our work and we co-organized two successful international conferences over the past few months - Stockholm in May, Moscow in September, and Rennes in October. Other events we are now organizing include a conference for Asia and the Pacific, (Kyoto in March 2009) and of course the World Forum in Busan, Korea on the 27-30 October 2009. Some other very interesting conferences planned for next year in the run up to the Busan event include a conference on Data Designed for Decisions - DD4D, which is being co-organized by the International Institute for Information Design - IIID and an expert workshop on the role of social science evidence and policy making, run with a committee from the National Research Council of the United States.

We live in uncertain times. We cannot help but wonder what this might mean for the longer term. But we wonder whether the current troubles might impress upon all of us the need to reassess how we think about, and measure the progress of our societies.

* For further information, please visit www.oecd.org/progress/newsletter.