Building on the work of the UNECE HLG-MOS Machine Learning Project (2019-2020), the UK Office for National Statistics Data Science Campus, in partnership with the UNECE, launched a new international initiative, the Machine Learning Group 2021, in January this year. The objectives of the Group include: - Facilitate the creation, development and implementation of research projects and skill-building activities that meet the global statistical community’s needs.
- Build and engage a strong machine learning community by sharing resources and good practice, exchanging ideas and experiences, and keeping abreast of developments in the field.
- Offer open, shareable, and easily accessible resources to the community; and
- Facilitate machine learning capacity building for official statistics.
The research work of the ML Group is divided into 5 Work Streams (WS) that aimed to address different issues that arise when using machine learning for official statistics (see “ML Group 2021 Work Streams Outputs” below for more information for each work stream and outputs). The monthly ML Group meetings throughout the year has built a community where members can share experiences, build connections and keep up to date with the new developments (see “ML Group 2021 Monthly Meeting Presentations” below for more information). The Coffee and Coding sessions, training materials collected as well as reports from various Work Streams will help facilitate the learning the ML. The ML Group that started with 120 members has now grown to about 250 members from 33 countries and 5 international organizations who either lead, assist or follow the numerous activities under the ML Group. You can find a summary of the group's work in 2021 in its final report here. The international efforts for advancing the use of ML for official statistics continue in 2022, read more about Machine Learning Group 2022 here. | 
