As of 2023, the core questionnaire of the reporting system for the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC) had 363 questions and 11 tables, which had been identified as burdensome for Parties to the Convention. Several questions in the core questionnaire have had low response rates and produced data that are difficult to analyse. Additionally, the overall quality of some of the data collected from Parties through the core questionnaire, especially in some non-health-related indicators requiring quantitative data, had been low. The additional questions on the use of implementation guidelines by the Parties (optional module) had another 276 questions and added an additional burden for the Parties that completed it. As a result, the response rate to the additional questions regularly had been very low.
There is also duplication in data collection efforts; United Nations agencies, primarily the World Health Organization (WHO), collect similar tobacco-related data from their Member States. Additionally, due to the evolution of tobacco control policies and the changing needs of the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the Convention, the core questionnaire is out of date and does not fully reflect the new tobacco control landscape. The reporting instrument should also be better aligned with the data needs of monitoring the Global Strategy to Accelerate Tobacco Control, adopted by the COP.
Finally, the online reporting platform utilized to gather data from the Parties is outdated, and can be made more user-friendly with improved functionalities, which will in turn increase the quality of the data collected.
The new questionnaire will no longer ask Parties to report on tobacco-related data that are already collected by WHO and other United Nations agencies, where possible. The questions in the remaining sections have been redesigned, simplified and updated to better reflect the current tobacco control context and guide Parties to provide the most relevant and accurate data. The additional (voluntary) questionnaire is proposed to be discontinued, but some elements of it will be incorporated into the core questionnaire. Additionally, the online reporting platform will be updated. These revisions are intended to help reduce the reporting burden on the Parties, improve data quality and produce information that is more relevant to the current global tobacco control context.
The Convention Secretariat will collaborate with WHO to obtain the tobacco-related data that WHO collects for the WHO Report on the Global Tobacco Epidemic. Additionally, publicly available data on tobacco trade and tobacco growing from other United Nations entities may also be used to assess global progress in WHO FCTC implementation. This information from external sources, together with the information provided by the Parties through the completion and submission of their WHO FCTC implementation reports, will be analysed by the Convention Secretariat to develop and submit to the appropriate session of the COP an updated global progress report.
Yes, the reporting instrument is outdated, with the last revision undertaken in 2012. The current duplication in data collection efforts between the Convention Secretariat and other United Nations agencies should be avoided; whenever possible, the Convention Secretariat should identify and gather data from other entities whenever an official data source is available elsewhere. Since the global tobacco control context is continuously evolving, the reporting instrument should evolve with it to enable a better assessment of global progress and better serve the needs of the COP. Moreover, the current online reporting platform is a burden to use and poses challenges to the Parties and the Convention Secretariat on their use and analysis of data, which is the reason a new reporting platform is needed.
The Convention Secretariat would build a new reporting platform to host the revised WHO FCTC questionnaire and will pilot it with interested Parties. Training and information sessions would be held to instruct Parties on how to use the new reporting instrument and online platform. Finally, the new reporting instrument and online platform should be ready for use by the next reporting cycle (2025).