On 28-29 January 2020 IOM organized a study visit for the representatives of Public Service Agency (PSDA) of Georgia to the Statistics Netherlands. The aim of the visit was to contribute to the building of migration data analytical capacity of the agency in Georgia.

Since 2016-17, the PSDA, with the assistance from IOM, started creation the Unified Migration Analytical System (UMAS) which is currently under development. The UMAS was designed to gather, consolidate and analyse data from a range of sources to help support migration related policy making across all relevant Government ministries in a more efficient and coherent way. During the 1.5 day visit the representatives of PSDA met with a number of experts to learn about the management and architecture of the system of social statistical datasets of the Netherlands.

From mid-2019 onwards the Georgian government has committed to take full ownership of the UMAS processes, which should contribute to development and implementation of sound migration policies, based on credible data. The study visit was implemented under the project “Capacity Building of Georgian Authorities in Migration Data Analysis”, funded by the IOM Development Fund (IDF).