4.5 Involving users in the national statistical system
4.5.1 The Statistical Advisory Council
In many countries, the statistical law stipulates that a high-level advisory body assists the NSO or the NSS, referred to in the GLOS as a statistical advisory council (SAC). The SAC's role is to discuss and express views on strategic priorities and the relevance of statistical activities in terms of user needs. Such views may be addressed to the chief statistician, the NSO or another national producer or government. The authority to decide to what extent these opinions will be considered remains with the relevant institutions fixed by the statistical legislation.
Conflicting views on methodological issues should not be brought before the SAC for decision either; this is not an issue for users, but for the professional statisticians within the statistical system, under the final authority of the chief statistician.
The size, role, composition, and effective ways of functioning of a SAC vary considerably from country to country. The rules are laid down in the statistical law and in lower-level legislation based on this law. One of the core functions of the SAC is the discussion of draft statistical programmes, be they multi-annual or annual, and of interim or final reports on their implementation.
Some considerations for an effective SAC, as included in the GLOS, are as follows:
■ Legitimacy is higher when most SAC members come from outside the national administration. In selecting user institutions, priority should be given to those that use statistics from several domains, such as the government ministries with cross-cutting tasks, mass media, the Parliament, regional and local administrations, or multidisciplinary research institutions.
■ The persons designated as members of the SAC should have sufficient seniority within the user institution or the user community they represent. For organizations like the Central Bank or the ministry of finance, which are both users and producers of official statistics, the member has to represent his organization's user departments and not the department producing official statistics. The separate fora where the NSO interacts with other producers are described in Chapter 4.6 – Coordination of the national statistical system.
■ The only SAC member who does not represent users of statistics is the chief statistician who acts as an ex-officio member.
■ The NSO should act as secretariat for the SAC by providing its staff and premises.
■ It is recommended that the SAC members' appointment is the responsibility of the same authority that appoints the chief statistician, i.e. the government in most cases, upon proposals by the bodies or groups to be represented. All stakeholders should be informed of the possibility to propose members for the SAC.
■ It is the competence of the SAC to decide how it functions within the limits given by the statistical legislation. It elects a chairperson who preferably represents a user community from outside the government and the national administration. The legislation in some countries may prescribe that the chief statistician also acts as chairperson of the SAC. The SAC can foresee in its rules of procedure the creation of sub-groups for specific questions or domains.
■ The SAC also acts as the advocate of the principles of official statistics. SAC members have an essential role to play within their communities and in public in terms of advocacy for the cause of official statistics. This may imply that the SAC discusses the interpretation and implementation of the principles and monitors the compliance of products and producers with the principles on its own initiative. The NSO or another producer may also submit a case related to one of the UNFPOS to the SAC for its opinion if it has broad implications beyond the statistical system and helps increase users and the public's awareness of these principles.1
■ Since the role of the SAC is to contribute to the relevance of official statistics, it will discuss both the coverage and quality of official statistics. In this respect, it may recommend independent external assessments of the quality of specific statistics or the implementation of the principles of official statistics in specific domains or activities are carried out.
■ Opinions of the SAC and the results of the assessments should be made public.
Some countries have experienced difficulties in making a SAC work in practice, despite a good legal basis. It is not easy to find outsiders who have sufficient interest in official statistics across subject areas and to make them feel relevant as they are only members of an advisory body. This is especially the case when communication between the NSO and the members of the SAC is limited to one meeting per year. If the chief statistician is the chairperson of the SAC, he or she may take initiatives for activating the SAC. Another way of raising the level of interaction may involve individual members of the SAC as spokesperson to specific user communities (see Chapter 4.5.3 – Interaction with user groups outside the statistical advisory council: capturing their information needs). SAC members may also actively communicate with the media and participate in events organized by the scientific community and the social society.
4.5.2 Differences between the roles of SACs and executive boards
There are important differences between the mandates of SACs and executive boards in countries with the NSO as autonomous agency (see Chapter 4.3.3 – Chief statistician):
■ The executive board can also decide on various issues that are binding for the NSO and possibly other producers, including, as noted in Chapter 4.4.5 – Authority to take decisions on the programmes.
■ The executive board members are not, as in an advisory group, mainly spokesperson for a user community, but part of a decision-making body for the NSS and have therefore to put the interests of this system first. For this reason, the statistical legislation can foresee in such situations that, in addition to the executive board with decision-making function, an additional body composed of important users with an advisory role similar to the SAC be set up.
■ The chief statistician is often the chairperson (or at least the executive board's deputy chairperson).
■ As decision-making body, the size of the executive board shouldn't be large. Its members should preferably have a sufficiently senior level but also enough time to participate actively in meetings and work of the executive board.
■ Members of executive boards can be appointed from selected user organizations or communities but also from other stakeholders. In the case of an NSO as an agency and other producers that are officially part of the NSS, the other producers are also members of the executive board.
■ The executive board is not only advocating for the cause of official statistics but is also monitoring to what extent the producers of official statistics comply with the UNFPOS.
4.5.3 Interaction with user groups outside the statistical advisory council: capturing their information needs
In the context of official statistics, users are typically classified into user groups. This classification may vary between countries.
In the present context, the following user groups are distinguished:
It is crucial for the NSO and the other producers in their areas of responsibility to establish networks with these user groups to obtain their substantive inputs and feedback regularly. Such networks allow contacts on an on-going basis and more frequently and less formally than in the context of the SAC. Their function is in the first instance to formulate their needs for statistical information from the NSS. User networks are a key element in minimising the risk of losing touch with changing reality and becoming less relevant over time in the production and dissemination of official statistics (See Chapter 6 - Users and their Needs).
Information needs are best formulated in terms of quantitative output content, periodicity, and major breakdowns. The extent of sub-national breakdowns between national aggregates and small area results is a dimension with considerable impact on the activity's volume and cost. Sometimes, users cannot express their information needs in terms that can easily be translated into indicators and in subsequent steps into statistical sources or data collection vehicles. The latter is the producers' main task, but the users should be involved so that they can assess the impact of various options. Furthermore, producers should make an effort to invite the representatives of users that are part of these networks to think ahead to anticipate future information needs that may arise, e.g. through new legislation.
As part of what relevance means for the users, many users press for shorter delays in the production of official statistics, up to the extreme of "real-time" statistics. Whereas some gradual improvements in timeliness are possible, this request is difficult to reconcile with the high-quality standards and benchmark function of official statistics. User networks and the SAC are channels by which the difference between official and other statistics can be communicated to users, emphasizing that for requests for "quick and dirty" jobs, they would have to turn to other providers, typically accepting lower quality. One partial solution for increasing the timeliness of official statistics may be the release of key "provisional" results ahead of the full set of final results. Still, quality standards and quality management procedures would have to be set up for such provisional results.
Policymakers have an increasing need to monitor their policy actions and consequences through quantitative indicators. Therefore, the NSO should proactively follow legislative developments and emerging requests for statistics and indicators across ministries to timely address these needs. In some countries, official statistics can even be used to allocate seats or distribute subsidies. Therefore, it is desirable that the NSO plays a role and gives advice about the adequacy of various indicators to monitor or even steer policy actions. However, it should clarify its role as producer of high-quality, timely and disaggregated indicators but not as part of policy decision-making. When policymakers require indicators for this purpose that deviate from definitions and classifications of official statistics, the statistical system should be ready to produce them as tailor-made statistical services but continue to publish as official statistics the results based on the concepts and definitions internationally agreed upon and applied across the national statistical systems2.
4.5.4 Other aspects related to the UNFPOS in the organized interactions with users
Networking with user groups is not only crucial for gathering knowledge about the demand for new statistics. It should also be used to obtain feedback on the current statistical activities and deliveries as included in the existing programmes, and how statistics are made accessible to specific user groups (see Chapter 10 - Dissemination of Official Statistics). Users identified by the producer within a specific dissemination channel can be surveyed for their satisfaction with the statistical products and how they are disseminated. Additional instruments to obtain information about users can be used for web users.
User networks can also be used for discussing issues of the supply side of official statistics, such as:
Networks with the statistical departments of international organizations exist not only to satisfy their data requests. From a national perspective, it is even more important to have the opportunity to participate in international efforts to derive new and revised standards for official statistics, to learn from the experience of other countries, and to engage in other projects led or partly financed by international organizations or donors. Networking with international statistical organizations may also allow the NSO or NSS to participate in peer reviews and assessments, either as systems to be assessed or through enabling experienced staff to be part of a team of experts to assess national statistical systems in other countries.
The statistical system can also help users make good use of official statistics by organizing training events for specific customers, particularly for the media that eventually reach a larger audience. It is also essential to keep privileged relations with more institutional users of statistics such as the government and the administration and inform them in advance about possible disruptive changes in times series due to revisions or the adoption of new international methodologies and standards.
As a public good, the results of official statistics can be used by everybody at his or her own responsibility. The only obligation is to indicate the source. However, according to the fourth fundamental principle, producers are entitled to comment on erroneous interpretation and misuse of statistics, if necessary, also publicly. Erroneous interpretation or misuse takes place, e.g. when a user disregards the limits to the interpretation of a statistical release; in this case, the NSO or the responsible producer should contact the user to prevent this from happening again. Another example would be a ministry communicating about a specific situation using other statistics than those produced for the same subject area by the NSS; without giving reasons.
It is within the chief statistician's authority to set up specific advisory groups for one or several of the above purposes and decide on their mandates and composition. He or she may prefer, in certain cases, to involve the SAC (or the executive board) to adopt the mandate and to act as the body to which such groups report, or to invite members of the SAC (or executive board) to participate in such groups. These groups can be set up for a limited or unlimited duration. In any case, it is important to be clear about the reporting so that their effectiveness can be assessed.
4.5.5 User access to confidential data for their own statistical purposes
Once a specific data set subject to confidentiality is within the NSS, this data set can only be used for statistical purposes, including experimental statistics, research or analytical activities by a producer of official statistics. The access to that specific data set is regulated by the statistical law and is under the responsibility of the producer in charge of acquiring and processing this data set as foreseen in the statistical programmes.
For countries not having the confidential provision explicitly applicable to all producers or a blurred delineation of the NSS, the exchange of confidential data should only operate from another (pseudo-)producer to the NSO; but not the other way around nor between (pseudo-)producers. A solution to that specific situation or during a transition phase would be to allow the transfer of individual data without identifier from the NSO and other producers of official statistics. It should be the chief statistician's prerogative to decide, on a case to case basis, if the conditions are met to share confidential data with other producers of official statistics; the risk being that confidential data is then shared by the other producers of official statistics with other non-statistical entities within their respective MDAs.
These users must be part of the scientific community, avail themselves of the means and expertise necessary to protect the integrity of the data, have no conflict of interest leading to the identification of statistical units, and commit to the exclusive use of the data transmitted for the described research purposes. Because of these constraints, there is an institutional and legal difficulty in granting the same form of access to government departments, since they may have a conflict of interest in terms of using data beyond the limits of statistical purpose (e.g. through re-identification of statistical units by matching data from the statistical system with their own data sets from administrative data collections).
One solution to this limitation would be for the statistical legislation to allow the producers of official statistics, particularly the NSO, to provide data processing services to government departments and other users beyond the public sector. Statistical processing services should not be funded from the regular budget of the NSO, and therefore customers requesting statistical services would have to pay for the additional costs of the required processing. While statistical processing services are essential for promoting the use of data, producers of official statistics should have the right to decide which processing services to engage in. They should first ensure sufficient resources for the activities mandated through the statistical programmes to ensure the highest quality of the regular production of statistics. Finally, the principle of confidentiality must be strictly observed, and results of data processing services do not allow natural or legal persons to be identified directly or indirectly.
A second solution for ministries is establishing a research department that is organizationally separated from the administrative departments. If this separation is credible, such a department could be considered a research institution covered by the relevant legal provisions of access to confidential data from official statistics for scientific purposes.