Statistical Office of the Slovak Republic

www.statistics.sk

The SOSR is an independent central body of the state administration of the Slovak Republic. Its status, tasks and competencies are defined in the law on state statistics (Act 540/2001 Coll.) that entered into force on 1 January 2002.
The head of the Statistical Office is appointed by the President of the Slovak Republic for a fixed five-year term (renewable). The President of the SOSR is independent from the Cabinet, but he may still participate in Cabinet sessions as a non-voting member. The independence of the Statistical Office is embedded in the Act on State Statistics No. 540/2001 of November 2001.

The SOSR is directed by the President and Vice-President assisted by the President’s Office. In line with the Act on Civil Service (2002) a Civil Service Office has been established at the SOSR.
The SOSR has its headquarters comprehending 4 core statistical sections (Methodology and Informatics Section, National Accounts and Prices Section, Business Statistics Section, Social Statistics and Demography Section) responsible for various fields of statistics and 3 departments subordinated directly to the President (Economic and Financial Affairs, Comprehensive Analyses and Publications and European Affairs and International Co-operation). The headquarters directs 8 regional offices responsible for data collection and processing related to specific fields for the whole country and provide information services to customers for respective region. The Institute for Informatics and Statistics (Infostat)is subordinated to the SOSR as a contributory organization.
Activities of the Office (headquarters and regional offices) are financed by the state budget and approved by Parliament after submitting the Final Account of the SOSR for the previous year.

The SOSR performs its activities o the basis of:
- Development Strategy of the SOSR (current one till 2007, later for 5 years)
- Program of Statistical Activities of the SOSR (current one till 2007, later for 5 years)
- Annual Work Plans
- Program of State Statistical Surveys (compiled for 3 years, updated annually)

In accordance with the Act on State Statistics the main activities of the SOSR are the following:
- to process and publish official statistical programs;
- to define methodologies for statistical surveys managed and executed by the Office, to collect and process statistical data;
- in collaboration with the ministries and state agencies to draft Programme of Surveys;
- in collaboration with the ministries and state agencies to compile characteristics of statistical surveys and to identify ways of collection of statistical data for the purposes of State statistics;
- to ensure project and program preparation regarding processing statistical surveys and to identify ways of collection and technologies for processing statistical data for statistical surveys carried out by the Office;
- to identify methodology for keeping the system of national accounts and to compile national accounts;
- in collaboration with the ministries and state agencies to set, publish and administer statistical classifications, codes and registers;
- to create and assign identification numbers,
- within its scope of competencies to participate in the preparation and implementation of international treaties or agreements on co-operation concluded by the Slovak Republic and to represent the Slovak Republic on international bodies and agencies in the field of state statistics;
-to organise and execute representative opinion polls on socio-economic issues;
-to collect and acquire foreign statistical information for the purposes of comparing the situation and trends in economy in the Slovak Republic and abroad;
-to prepare analyses of selected characteristics of socio-economic and ecological trend in the Slovak Republic in whole or in its part(s);
-to provide statistical information to foreign entities and to co-operate with international bodies and agencies in implementing standards and classifications in the field of statistics;
-to inspect compliance with reporting obligation in the filed of State statistics and impose fines for any breach of compliance;
-to disseminate outcomes of statistical surveys for the Slovak Republic or its territorial units and administrative units, to inform the public on a regular basis on socio-economic and demographic trends, to provide statistical information and issue statistical publications,
Besides these tasks of official statistics the SO SR is responsible for specific task in the field of preparation of elections and referendums and processing of results.

The Statistical Office of the Slovak Republic as an independent, autonomous national institution has been operating since 1 January 1993 when the independent Slovak Republic was established. However history of the institution is longer. It was established in 1951 as a central statistical body responsible for the Slovak part of the former Czechoslovakian Federation. It was subordinated to the Federal Statistical Office in Prague and was conducting statistical surveys in the territory of the Slovakia.

The new Act No. 540/2001 Coll. on state statistics came into force 1 January 2002. On the base of this Act, legal subjectivity of regional offices (with seat in Bratislava, Trnava, Nitra, Trenčín, Žilina, Banská Bystrica, Košice and in Prešov, which took part in fulfilling the tasks of the SO SR in the fields by relevant specialization for the whole territory of the Slovak Republic in 1996 - 2001) was cancelled from 1 January 2002 and regional offices became directly a part of the Office as its internal organizational units. The Act created a space for strengthening stability and independence of the Office by enacting appointment and recalling of the President of the Office by the President of the SR on a proposal of the Slovak Government with the term of office for five years (with a possibility to re-appoint the same person only for two consequent terms of office).

The legislative intent of the act on 2011 population and housing census has laid the foundation for creation of wide source of information necessary for prognosis of the trends in demography and for decision-making in social policy of the state. Great progress was made in dissemination and provision of information by putting the new internet portal into operation and by on-line database of regional statistics. The Office, as an integral part of the European Statistical System, has actively participated on initiatives towards the system development, creation of statistical legislation, introduction of new statistical procedures and methods, and increase of comparability and quality of statistical data. The development of the management quality system has continued, as well as implementation of the Code of Practice into all fields. The team of the experts of the European Statistical System has stated, after the examination of implementation, that the SOSR is the professional and well performing institution.

Act on State Statistics No. 540/2001 of November 2001

Other relevant legislation
- Act on Protection of Personal Data in Information Systems (1998)
- Act on Censuses of Population, Housing and Dwellings (2001)
- Customs Act (2001)

The other producers of official statistics are ministries(Agriculture, Education, Health, etc.), the National Bank of Slovakia and other state authorities. They conduct over half of the surveys included in the Program of State Statistical Surveys.

The Statistical Council is a permanent expert advisory body for the President of the Office in the field of state statistics. It is chaired by the President of the SO SR and has 26 members representing various ministries, the National Bank of Slovakia, the Slovak Academy of Science, trade unions and employers’ associations. The Council holds a plenary session twice a year. It discusses the strategy of state statistics, principals of statistical activity of ministries and other institutions and the proposal for the statistical survey programme. It also discusses and comments on legislative questions in the field of statistics.

25 May 2001

According to the Act on State Statistics No. 540/2001 for statistical purposes any ministry, state agency, self-governing municipal body or public institution may be required by the Office to provide data collected, processed or held by them. They are obliged to provide to the Office the required data free of charge. The obtained data can be used for statistical purposes only.

Protection of confidential data is guaranteed by the Act on State Statistics No. 540/2001.
No confidential data may be published, communicated or used for purposes other than statistical unless approved so by legal entities or natural persons who had provided them and to whom the data refers.
Individual data cannot be published unless they are aggregated (at least three).

The Calendar of the First Data Release contains the release dates of selected data categories on the forthcoming four months. The selected data categories are in line with the principles of the IMF Special Data Dissemination Standard - gross domestic product (GDP), consumer price indices, industrial producers price indices, industrial production index, foreign trade (summary and detailed data), employment and unemployment according to the labour force sample survey, average monthly wage from quarterly reporting. They are extended by indicators with increased user interest (development of core and net inflation, development of harmonized indices of consumer prices, construction production, indices of other producers prices, monthly data on employment and wage in selected branches according to the statistical reporting, receipts for own performance and goods in selected branches, results of business tendency survey and indicator of economic sentiment).
The Calendar is available on the Office’s website and in the monthly published comprehensive publications (Bulletin of the Statistical Office of the Slovak Republic, Monitor of the Economy of the Slovak Republic). The dates are set as an exact date with exception of foreign trade, where the marginal (latest) release date is stated. The modification of the exactly set date is announced a week before the calendar date, on Friday (or the last working day) till the end of the working time at the latest. If the date of release is stated in the calendar as the latest date, the exact date is announced till Friday of the previous week (or the last working day) at the latest.

Publications are issued in these basic publication series:
-comprehensive publications (e.g. Statistical Yearbook, Bulletin of the Statistical Office of the Slovak Republic, Monitor of the Economy of the Slovak Republic
-thematic information (publications from the field of industry, construction, transport, post and telecommunications, foreign trade, research and development)
-classifications, codes (released in the Collection of Acts of the Slovak Republic)
-other publications

Slovak, English

Basic dissemination forms of statistical information
-products in printed form
-data providing in written form, by electronic mail, fax, telephone
-electronic form of products from standard outputs
-products based on specific requests of users
-data providing on-line
-personal contact with users
-press conferences, articles for press, interviews for press and other media
-online public database SLOVSTAT containing time series of indicators of economic and social-economic development in the SR

Pursuant to the Act on State Statistics No. 540/2001 the Statistical Office can provide microdata for scientific purposes only in case if the direct identification of the data is not possible (anonymized data).