Dear Mr. Gorani

Mr. Krasniqi,

Representatives of academia, civil society, media, colleagues,

I have recently assumed my duties as the Resident Representative of UNDP in Kosovo. Allow me to say how happy I am to be here - and look forward to continuing the successful cooperation we have had with our partners in Kosovo.

This year we are celebrating the 20^th anniversary of UNDP in Kosovo. It is a milestone that we will mark throughout the year with a series of events.

One of them is today’s launch of the Public Pulse Visualizer. I assume you are all familiar with the Public Pulse which has been measuring how people perceive changes in Kosovo – for example, in relation to democratization, economic development, and political direction.

UNDP has been measuring citizen’s perceptions over the past 17 years, first through the Early Warning System and then through the Public Pulse. We have now put together all the data collected through Public Pulse on one platform.  

We believe that this platform will be useful for you – whether you are a researcher, journalist, or otherwise just happen to be interested in how people perceive key development issues in Kosovo. It is an open database and will be available to anyone interested.

It is often said that a picture is worth a thousand words. In today’s world, the average attention span is only eight seconds – a sharp decrease from 12 seconds which it was in 2000. When we are constantly exposed to massive amounts of information, data needs to be shared quickly and visually.

That is why we created the Public Pulse Visualizer.

The visualizer shows some interesting trends over the years.

For example, the Democratization index – which is composed of a number of indicators – related to, for example, local governance, elections and media freedom. On average, we can see an upward trend between 2010 and November 2018.

Likewise, the index measuring Economic Confidence has developed positively. The index captures perceptions on the employment conditions, business conditions, and expectations vis-à-vis family income.  

The data is disaggregated according to gender, region, ethnicity and age – allowing for interesting analysis.   

The ownership of this data will be transferred to the Kosovo Agency of Statistics. We trust that this data will be useful for policy makers as a reflection of citizens’ perceptions. It can be used for strengthening evidence-based planning and decision-making.

I would like to extend my thanks to the office of USAID in Kosovo for the support to the Public Pulse over the past 17 years.

Thank you very much for being here today!