NSSTA Celebrates 18th Foundation Day on 13 February 2026

Key facts

• The National Statistical Systems Training Academy (NSSTA) celebrated its 18th Foundation Day on 13 February 2026 at Greater Noida, Uttar Pradesh.
• The theme for the 18th Foundation Day was Reimagining Capacity Building for Official Statistics to achieve vision of Viksit Bharat@2047.
• Union Minister Rao Inderjit Singh inaugurated the Digital Data Lab to strengthen digital capacity building and technology-enabled learning.
• Two journals titled AAROHAN and PRATIBIMB, prepared by the Indian Statistical Service (ISS) officer trainees of the 2024 and 2025 batches, were released.
• Dr. Saurabh Garg, Secretary of the Ministry of Statistics & Programme Implementation (MoSPI), described data as the fifth factor of production alongside land, labour, capital, and technology.
• The United Nations Resident Commissioner (UNRC), Mr. Stefan Priesner, described statistics as the grammar of development.
• The event highlighted the restructuring of the ISS, which now deploys officers across 60 ministries to ensure data harmonisation and machine-readability.
• Ms. S. Radha Chauhan, Chairperson of the Capacity Building Commission (CBC), emphasised the need to scale human capacities to match the evolution of Agentic AI.
• A panel discussion on Communicating Statistics to the Policymakers and Public was moderated by the former Chief Statistician of India (CSI), Dr. T. C. A. Anant.
• Certificates of Appreciation were presented to top performers of the MoSPI in the iGOT Karmayogi courses.