organised and regulated to output a high quality product, to use it, and to provide feedback on its utility. These elements include legislation, regulation and policies; principles and codes of ethics; and oversight, coordination and consultation mechanisms. Also included are a statistical organisation, all the bureaux, offices, agencies of the government, all government-owned or controlled corporations that are engaged in statistical activities either as their primary functions or as part of their administrative or regulatory functions; central bank, and individuals, households and businesses that are both data suppliers and users of official statistics.
Defining Official Statistics
Statistics are fundamental to good government, to the delivery of public services and to decision-making in all sectors of society. Official statistics are those statistics produced by the government infrastructure using data that are systematically collected using surveys or extracted from administrative registers. According to the United Nations Fundamental Principles of Official States “official statistics are an indispensable element in the information system of a democratic society, serving the Government, the economy and the public with information about the economic, demographic, social and environmental situation”. This is one of ten principles for official statistics that have been subscribed to for just over 25 years.
Developed by the Conference of European Statisticians in 1991, the principles were endorsed by the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in 2014. They are considered a basic framework that all statistical activities developed by national and international organisations must follow in recognising official statistics as a public good. In so doing, the UNGA noted that the “essential trust of the
public in the integrity of official statistical systems and confidence in statistics depend to a large extent on respect for the fundamental values and principles that are the basis of any society seeking to understand itself”. In that regard, official statistics are compiled and made available on an impartial basis to honour citizens' entitlement to public information.
Authority to Produce Official Statistics
Official statistics is a public good, the production of which is provided for in statistical legislation. Most countries authorise a national statistical office (NSO) to collect, compile, and disseminate statistics. The Revised Treaty supplements this authority by requiring of Member States to coordinate, harmonise and undertake joint actions and pursue joint policies in statistics and in institutional arrangements for economic consultation and information dissemination. The Treaty also stipulates the development sectors for which the Member States should collaborate to produce the requisite statistics to inform and measure the Economic Union’s progress. Among the sectors are agriculture, tourism, education, health, energy and telecommunications.
Though these provisions are a necessary condition to pursue a regional approach to build and upgrade the statistical architecture that informs and measures progress toward full integration, it is not a sufficient condition. Essential regulation, relationships, roles and resources are just some of the requirements that extend the adequacy of these national and regional provisions for statistics, and bind these elements into the notion of an empowered and resilient national statistical system.
The concept of a statistical system is ubiquitous in the lexicon of statistical development.
Integrating Big Data and geospatial data with official statistics portend exciting and revolutionary times for statistics - somewhat like the innovation of 3D and how it revolutionised the movie watching experience! Integrated data can be visualised as if they are tangible given their granularity, breadth and frequency.
Complex phenomena are easily transformed into consumable information packages, ready to be interpreted by the policy analyst, the media, the student, the academic, the politician, the citizen, all making responsible use of the data discoveries so as to effect positive changes to the justifiable facets of society.
After all is collected, geo-tagged, integrated and mined, the resulting statistics must be grounded in national realities, systems, processes and a governance framework to safeguard its reliability, validity and utility.
How then does the Commission and its attendant NSSs ready for what lies ahead with a marriage of traditional and contemporary data?
It will be the responsibility of the RSS to tame the contemporary data by imposing a structure so that they can be integrated with traditional data. As the leader of the RSS, with support from the global statistical community, and cooperation from the NSOs, the OECS Commission will drive initiatives to determine roles, responsibilities and partnerships; address privacy, technology and capacity concerns; introduce legislation and policies; and advocate the benefits the data revolution to monitoring sustainable development and regional integration.
Officicial Statistics is a public good, the production of which is provided for in Statistical Legislation