Statistics, Knowledge and Governance (original) (raw)
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STATISTICS AS INSTRUMENTS FOR PROSPEROUS, TRANSPARENT AND DEMOCRATIC SOCIETIES
In January 2014 the General Assembly of the United Nations endorsed the Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics, which was adopted by the Statistical Commission of the United Nations in April 1994, following an initiative of the Conference of European Statisticians. Valid and reliable information is essential for the management of the affairs of a democratic society aiming at generalised wellbeing and prosperity. It is important that users and stakeholders of official statistics and the citizens at large have total confidence in statistics. To produce valid and reliable statistics it is necessary that Governments provide the legal framework and resources to the statistical system of their countries to allow statisticians to produce the required statistical information, without interference using the best available methodology and techniques from the best suited sources of information. Respondents, be they individual, enterprises or organisations, have to provide the required information truthfully and as completely as possible. Official statistics have to guarantee that such individual information will be used for statistical purposes only. Moreover the results of statistical enquiries have to be made available to all users without distinction. Such basic requirements of official statistics were not respected in the centrally planned economies before 1989 and even in some of the countries with market economies. During the transition process toward democracies and market economies of the countries from Eastern and Central Europe it was recognized that official statistics plays an essential role for preserving democracy and that its special and unique role should be recognized by
The paper describes a changing role of official statistics in the context of enhanced economic governance in the European Union and explains new challenges linked to a growing "politisation" of statistics used for evidence-based decision making. It presents a whole range of measures with the European Statistics Code of Practice at the centre, which were adopted by the European Statistical System to enhance independence, integrity, and accountability of the statistical service, and to safeguard credibility of official statistics. Strengths and weaknesses of this approach, as well as lessons learnt are discussed.
Statistical Journal of the IAOS
The growing importance of statistical evidence, data and information for political decisions is reflected in the handy and popular formulation 'Data for Policy' (D4P). Under this cover, well-known guiding themes, such as the modernisation of the public sector, or evidence-informed policy-making, are led to new solutions with new technologies and infinitely rich data sources. Data for Policy means more to official statistics than just new data, techniques and methods. It is not least a matter of securing an important function and position for official statistics in the Policy for Data of the future. In order to justify this position, it is necessary to have a clear understanding of the tasks of official statistics for the functioning of (democratic) societies, with a view to how these tasks have to be reinterpreted under changing conditions (above all because of digitisation and globalisation).
Trust and Dissemination in Official Statistics
We discuss the relation between trust and statistical dissemination, drawing on examples from the Netherlands and comparing with other European countries. Dutch citizens have a fair amount of confidence in official statistics, even in the recent period of political and economic upheaval. The most important reason for this seems to be the political culture in the Netherlands, which puts a strong emphasis on rational policy making based on evaluations from scientific councils, committees and official research bureaus.
The Commitment on Confidence in European Statistics (CoC) presented in the amended Regulation on European Statistics No 223/2015 can be seen not only as a means fostering the implementation of the European Statistics Code of Practice within the national statistical system but simultaneously also as an instrument paving the way to a whole-off production of national statistics under the fully-fledged coordination and leadership of the National Statistics Institute. The paper presents experience with the development of the CoC which has turned to be a complicated political process faced with many obstacles. The major one has been linked to the explanation why there is a need for such an instrument if official statistics enjoys a high reputation, and how to avoid a risk of undermining this reputation. Lessons from the Czech experience are offered.
The Systems Approach to Official Statistics
Modern societies are complex and interdependent. We have become painfully aware of how environmental problems and financial crises with local origins may very quickly escalate into major global headaches with consequences affecting almost all aspects of our lives. In countries with great ambitions in so-called social engineering and the development of a welfare state, providing good living conditions for all citizens, there is a growing need for more and better official statistics as a basis for decision-making, planning, and evaluation. Businesses of all kinds also demand good official statistics, both on a national level and internationally, in order to be able to discover and exploit business opportunities. At the same time as there is an ever-growing demand for more and better, and maybe in particular more comprehensive and coherent official statistics, there are budget and time constraints forcing all producers of official statistics to economise on resources, especially in the very expensive production phase of data collection. Respondents also expect producers of official statistics to reduce the response burden and to harmonise data collection for official statistics with the natural business processes of the data providers, be they companies, organisations or citizens. This paper discusses how producers of official statistics could possibly meet all these challenges. There are alternatives to traditional data sources and data collection methods that may be exploited for statistical purposes, e.g., administrative registers and information systems, as well as data archives. The rapidly growing use of computerised information systems communicating via the Internet results, as a side-effect, in large volumes of "electronic footprints" that could possibly be exploited for statistical purposes -without harming the privacy of people or the confidentiality of business activities. In order to come to grips with growing problems associated with some traditional forms of statistics production, and to reap the potential benefits of the new possibilities, it is argued that we must adopt a more holistic approach, a systems approach, to official statistics. This paper elaborates such a holistic approach from a number of different perspectives.