text: limitations of the state of the art and of the analytical tools currently available. The Expert Group felt that the experimental approaches and analytical methods of UNRISD were innovative and imaginative, but that the methodologies advanced and findings obtained thus far were not conclusive enough for general application, especially for country­ specific planning and analysis. III. NATIONAL SOCIO-ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT INDICATORS PROJECTS A. AUSTRALIA 33. Some of the participants described the development indicators projects in their countries as case studies. A description of the social statistics collected in Australia was presented. The list, impressive not 9 only in range but also in the sophistication of data collection and ana­ lysis, was regarded as generally beyond the scope of most developing areas. The presentation also described the planning process and the manner in which established priorities within the process controlled the options available for statistical exercises. 34. Many participants agreed that policy-makers were sometimes the last people to want social indicators. However, despite the current lack of interest in social indicators in Australia, the demands on the statistician by planners and policy-makers for social data were greater than the resources available to meet those demands. The problem of official indifference to or suspicion of social indicators was found to be common to most countries where the Government had not taken the initiative for establishing a system of social indicators. 35. The "value loaded" nature of social indicators was cautiously broached. General discussion did not completely clarify that point nor did it cover the quasi-political nature of the eventual uses of social indicators; it stopped at agreement that collection, structuring and presentation of data should be neutral and objective. The frequently subjective decisions of which statistics to collect or to which indicators . to give priority was mentioned in that connexion. Selection was a serious 
analysis: The text appears to be discussing the development of social indicators and their role in national socio-economic development, particularly in the context of policy-making. It mentions the limitations of current analytical tools and the challenges of collecting and analyzing data. The text also touches on the importance of neutral and objective data collection and presentation. Based on this, it seems likely that the text is related to economic development and education.