Small Area Estimation (SAE) is a statistical method for estimating parameters when the sample size is small or insufficient. To meet the need to meet the SDGs indicators at the district/city level in Indonesia, the Directorate of People's Welfare Statistics of the Indonesian Statistics Agency (BPS) held a four-phase SAE training course with continuous content. Participants included representatives from Polstat STIS, Pusdiklat (Education and Training Center), and various directorates within BPS.

The first phase of the training took place at the Grand Mercure Kemayoran Hotel on June 19-21, 2019, with the morning session being delivered by Prof. Chairil Anwar Notodiputro, a speaker with the latest insights on SAE. The afternoon and evening sessions featured presentations by pre-appointed instructors from Polstat STIS, Pusdiklat, and BPS. The first stage of training focused on the introduction of the SAE method and the open source software R. The second and third stages of training were held at the Le Meridien Hotel, namely on July 10-12, 2019 and July 31 - August 2, 2019. In the second stage of training, in the morning session there was a presentation of material from the resource person, namely Dr. Anang Kurnia. Then in the afternoon to evening sessions, participants were given an understanding of Direct Estimation and the EBLUP (Empirical Best Linear Unbiased Prediction) area level model which is the simplest model in the SAE method. Furthermore, the third stage of training discussed the use of the EBLUP Benchmark model, namely a model that guarantees that the results meet the official statistical requirements, namely consistency. The EBLUP Benchmark can guarantee that the aggregation of estimators across all districts/cities will be consistent with the official figures from the province. In the final stage of the training (28-30 August 2019) participants were divided into several groups to apply the material that had been given by calculating the SDGs indicators from each subject matter using the SAE Benchmark method by utilizing PODES data. This activity was carried out with instructor assistance. The results of the group's work were presented and then discussed by a discussion team consisting of an academic team (teaching team) from Polstat STIS and a team of practitioners from BPS. The academic team from Polstat STIS were Dr. Azka Ubaidillah, Dr. Siti Muchlisoh, Ika Yuni Wulansari, M.Stat., Sukim, M.Sc., Budi Yuniarto, M.Sc., and Robert Kurniawan, M.Sc. This fourth stage of the training was held at the Novotel Mangga Dua Square Hotel with the final results of 97 SDGs indicator targets, as many as 65 percent were calculated using the SAE method. This training is still the initial stage of calculating SDGs indicators at the district/city level. Further processes are still needed, including ground checks and evaluations to ensure that the indicators generated through the SAE method are precise, valid, and reliable. It is hoped that the subject matter representatives who participated in this training can disseminate and apply the SAE method in calculating other required indicators using the SAE method, especially when encountering obstacles in the form of a small number of samples.