The findings of the HI SEE preliminary assessment show that existing disability data is often conflicting or contradictory, depending on the different sources, making it difficult to get an accurate picture of the situation. Also, they are generally framed in the medical model so that they are disaggregated by type of impairment. The information is mainly based on medical indicators such as the number of people in institutions or the number of people with a specific disability (e.g. paraplegic). More useful information for inclusive policy-making, such as the number of people with disabilities attending mainstream schools or the percentage of those employed in the open labour market, is almost impossible to find and when they do exist, they are not up-dated regularly.
Albania, Bosnia and Serbia have some general common patterns:
• Disability definitions are restrictive and exclusionary. They are also often contradictory, depending on different laws,
• The information collected does not capture the actual living conditions of people with disabilities,
• The data collection system is oriented towards use of registers to track beneficiaries of the social protection system,
• The population of people with disabilities covered by the registries is not complete; there is no information on people with disabilities who do not have access to services or who are not beneficiaries of social protection or disability pension. As a rule, the data on children with disabilities are often missing,
• Duplication of data is frequent. For instance, data on disability allowances and on access to institutions is duplicated and therefore cannot be aggregated,
• Even the surveys on disability that have conducted in the region are put to little or no use,
• Statistical culture in Serbia and Bosnia is underdeveloped, especially on socio-economic indicators,
• The ministries responsible for the coordination of disability issues are those of Labour, Employment and/or Social Affairs,
• Other services such as Health and Education do not usually have disaggregated data on access to mainstream services,
• Information on access of people with disabilities to mainstream services does not exist (with the exception of data collected by national employment bureaus in all countries and the Health Insurance Fund in Albania),
• None of the 3 states has any information on the coverage of services as they just have information on service users,
• Central Statistics Offices (CSOs) do not collect information on disability but are willing to do it.

Different initiatives in each country
Bosnia and Herzegovina conducted a Living Standards Measurement Survey (LSMS) which included a question on disability in 2001 to 2005, an initiative driven by the World Bank. However, according to the Central Statistics Office, almost no national authority requested the results of the survey or used the data in policy-making. Furthermore, no DPOs were involved in the process so there was an overall lack of ownership on the project resulting in a lack of awareness about the survey from DPOs (with the exception of IC Lotos from Tuzla who was involved at the end of the project). Subsequently, the data is not being used by the disability community for analysis and lobbying. The LSMS will not be continued in 2007. However, a Labour Force Survey (LFS) and Household Budget Survey (HBS) are planned and there is a possibility to include disability in these surveys in 2008.
Albania has a more advanced statistical culture and the statistics methodology used by the CSO is closer to EUROSTAT standards. This implies that the Albanian CSO has a strong capacity to collect data on disability on a national level which should be leveraged by the state. There is also a National Disability Strategy in place in Albania that was adopted in 2004, but the implementation and monitoring of the Strategy has not fully begun and there are no monitoring indicators developed yet. Having a national disability strategy requires statistical data for monitoring implementation and this can be done by the CSO who has the capacity to do so.
In Serbia, an LSMS will be conducted as World Bank initiative and it is planned to include questions on disability thanks to the lobbying of DPOs and Handicap International. It will be important that DPOs and national authorities are involved in the process. A National Disability Strategy is currently being drafted and the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) for Serbia includes a section on disability. Both documents present an excellent opportunity for creating statistical indicators to monitor the implementation processes. The Ministry of Labour, Employment and Social Affairs is currently conducting an assessment of institutional capacities to collect data on disability. This is another interesting opportunity for the advancement of the debate on disability statistics and it is important that DPOs are involved in the process.
To calculate these new social policy indicators such as increase in employment of people with disabilities in the open labour force or a higher percentage of people with disabilities completing higher education, the three countries will have to consider a different approach to collecting information on disability, and surveys will need to be implemented to collect the missing information.