State Statistical Office

www.stat.gov.mk

The State Statistical Office is an independent state agency. SSO reports to the Government of the Republic of Macedonia

The State Statistical Office is located in Skopje and 275 persons (situation: December 2008) work in the institution, of which 189 work at the Central Office and 86 at the eight Regional Offices located on the territory of the country. Since 2006, the State Statistical Office is being managed by Mrs. Blagica Novkovska, MSc, who is responsible for her work before the Government of the Republic of Macedonia. The office is financed through government budget.

In order to fulfill the professional challenges, in 2008, the new organisational scheme of the institution was established.

Director
Deputy Director
State advisors

National Accounts:
Departments included in the Sector:

o Department for Calculation of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by Expenditure Method

o Department for calculation of GDP by Production method

o Department for Quarterly Calculation and Calculation of GDP at Constant Prices

o Department for regional accounts and sustainable development indicators

Business Statistics
Departments included in the Sector:

o Department for Industry and Construction Statistics and Business tendencies

o Department for Agriculture, Forestry, Water Supply, Hunting and Fishery and Environment Protection

o Department for Internal and External Trade, ICT, Transport, Tourism, Hotels, and Restaurants

o Department for statistical business register and economic classifications

o Department for prices

o Department for structural business statistics

o Department for business tendencies

Social Statistics
Departments included in the Sector:

o Department for Demography and statistical population register

o Department for Social Services

o Department for Labour Market

o Department for Living Standard

IT Support
Departments included in the Sector:

o Department for Technical Support of the System

o Department for Application Development

o Department for Data Bases, Metabases and Data Warehouses

o Department for statistical and mathematical methods and quality of statistical surveys

o Department for support of surveys and data entry

Sector for Dissemination and International Cooperation
Departments included in the Sector:

o Department for information,library and marketing

o Department for publication

o Department for international cooperation and European integration

o Department for electronic dissemination, mapping and statistical territorial register


Sector for Financial affairs and Organization and conduction of statistical surveys on field
Departments included in the Sector:

o Department for financial affairs

o Department for public procurements

Sector for support of Director's Activities
Departments included in the Sector:

o Department-Director's Office

o Department for legal and general affairs

o Department for monitoring of the statistical programme and strategic planning

o Department for internal financial control

Sector for Agricultural statistics and Statistics on environment

o Department for agriculture, forestry, hunting and fishery

o Department for environmental statistics,energy and transport

o Department for economic accounts in agriculture and register of agricultural holdings

The statistical system is defined in a five-year Programme for statistical surveys, covering the statistical surveys conducted by the State Statistical Office and other institutions in the country.
In accordance with the Law on State Statistics, the type, number and scope of statistical surveys, which are conducted in the Republic of Macedonia, are defined with the Five-Year Statistical Programme. The last one refers to the period 2008-2012 and in this document, adopted by the Government of the Republic of Macedonia, are defined the statistical surveys conducted by the State Statistical Office of the Republic of Macedonia and other actors in the statistical system.

The mission of SSO is providing and disseminating statistical information for the society and economy, indispensable for supporting the democratic processes, development of the economy and euro-integration process, as well as for the scientific and research aims.
Basic Tasks include:

o Collecting, processing, analyses and dissemination of statistical information for a large number of phenomena from demographic, social and economic life of the country.

o Besides, State Statistical Office is authorized for establishing and maintenance of data basis and statistical register in the country, prescribing of statistical methodologies, establishing of international cooperation in the field of statistics and other activities.

o The State Statistical Office annually conducts 273 statistical surveys from different areas: 87 from the field of social statistics, 147 from the field of business statistics, 35 from the field of national accounts and 4 surveys in the field of registers.

o The State Statistical Office produces annually approximately 30 publications, 270 Releases and realizes more that 650 requests for unpublished statistical data.

In 2005, State Statistical Office of Republic of Macedonia turns 60 years of the establishment. The Government of the People’s Republic of Macedonia, on May 19th 1945, made a decision about forming of a federal statistics bureau, as an independent administrative expert-office. The 1st of June, the day of the Decision’s proclamation and its going into effect, today is celebrated as a Day of the Macedonian Statisticians.

In the past 60 years of existence, SSO has passed through several significant phases of transformation, during which it has changed its organizational form and the titles in accordance to the changes within the socio-political system.

As a national statistics, the Statistical Office completely independently takes over all the activities, from producing methodologies, over gathering, processing and dissemination of data, including the international data exchanging. The international standards are followed and applied through the harmonization of the existing methodologies, as well as producing new ones.

Within the implementation of the Stabilization and Association Agreement and the Interim Agreement from 2001, SSO has been given double role - it has been appointed as a co-coordinator of the national statistical system of the Republic of Macedonia in the process of harmonization with the Acquis Communitaire, and in, the same time, in the European integration process, it has the obligation to provide reliable, objective, accurate and internationally comparable statistical data for all spheres of the Stabilization and Association Agreement .

SSO is a member of the Sub-Committee for economic, financial and statistical issues within the activities of the Cooperation Council between Republic of Macedonia and EU.

Official statistics in Macedonia are regulated under the Law on State Statistics of 1997, and it's according the UN and EU fundamental principles of official statistics; SSO puts special emphasis on data confidentiality, data gathered are strictly confidential data and used only for statistical purposes and are published as aggregated one; other laws in close relation with SSO are Law on organization and work of the state administration bodies from 2000, Law on data confidentiality, Population census Law from 2002. Law on state statistics ("Official Gazette of the Republic of Macedonia", and changes and supplements of this Law published in "Official Gazette of the Republic of Macedonia" No 54/97 and 21/07).

The National statistical system is comprised of 8 bearers of official statistics: SSO - coordinator of national statistical system (national accounts, economic statistics, households statistics, demographic statistics, labor market statistics, education statistics, environmental statistics, external trade and justice and crime statistics), National Bank of RM ( monetary, financial and balance of payments statistics), Fund for pension and disability insurance (labor market statistics), Directorate of Hydrometeorology Affairs (environmental statistics), Ministry of Justice (justice and crime statistics), Ministry of Internal Affairs, State Office of Health Services (healthcare statistics), Agency for employment of RM (labor market statistics); Government Finance statistics is under Ministry of Finance that according to proposed amendments of the State Statistics law is planned to be included as a bearer of official statistics 9responsible for government finance statistics).

The statistical law establishes the Statistical Council as an expert advisory body of the state statistics. A main task for the Council is to discuss the guidelines and bases of the Programme of Statistical Research and give its opinion on the proposal for passing this programme. It shall also give opinion on the annual report.

o The Statistical Council consists of a President and 12 members that are appointed and dissolved by the Parliament of the Republic of Macedonia for the period of four years.

o The Director of the SSO is an ex-officio member of the Council.

1 November 2002

Article 25 of the Statistical Law

The administrative data files may be used as data sources for statistical research in all cases with the exception of cases where the relevant act that covers their introducing strictly specifies that data from the same may not be used for statistical purposes.

Data files managers specified by the relevant act that covers establishing of data files are hereby obliged to provide the Office with all data contained in data files and are necessary to the implementation of a statistical research.

Following the taking over of data from data files, the Office shall store them and keep them in its databases together with all data collected.

The Statistical Office of Macedonia pays due attention to data confidentiality. Data confidentiality covers the preventive measures to decrease the possibility for misuse of data as well the measures to remove this disruption.

Individual data for legal and personal data for natural entities has a status of official secret and will be used exclusively for statistical purposes.

The employees and other external collaborators in the Office and other authorised organs, who have the access to individual data, are obliged to process and store the basic observations as official secret during and after the completion of the processing.

From the Statistical Law:
VII. DATA PROTECTION

Article 34
The Office and other authorised bodies shall be authorised to collect individual data for statistical purposes only for statistical research specified in the Programme of Statistical Research and for the needs of research specified by other relevant acts.
As an exception to Paragraph 1 of this Article data collected for non- statistical purposes may be used only for the needs of statistical research specified in the Programme of Statistical Research or by Law. Identification data collected in compliance with the Programme of Statistical Research may be used for developing inventories to be used for statistical purposes (when selecting a sample etc.).

Article 35
Individual data to be collected, processed and released for statistical purposes shall be utilised for statistical purposes only. Individual data shall not be used to pass any decision whatsoever relating to an enterprise or other legal or physical person. Compiled individual data shall not be placed in other collections comprising individual data and planned to be used for non-statistical purposes.

Article 36
In cases where individual data are collected directly from the reporting unit, the last shall be informed on the elements mentioned in the Article 27, Paragraph 1 of this Act.

In cases where individual data are taken over from other data files, the legal or physical person concerned in the same shall be informed thereupon in a certain manner, except in cases when that information is not possible or it requires unreasonable effort to conduct.

Article 37
Sensitive data that are subject of statistical processing are collected in a form that unable identification of the referring person. As exception on Paragraph 1 of this article if sensitive data are necessary for further data processing, additional measures of protection will be provided including separation of identification data even in the phase of data gathering, unless this is obviously unreal or impractical.

Article 38
All personal data collected for statistical purposes shall be subject to confidentiality protection procedures specified by this Act and the Act on Personal Data Confidentiality Protection ("The Official Gazette of the Republic of Macedonia" No.12/94).

Paragraph 2 of Article 21 of the Act on Personal Data Protection shall cover the rights of data subjects in connection with personal data managing, conducted in compliance with this Act.

Provisions from Paragraph 1 and 2 of this Article shall apply also on the individual data on legal subjects that are defined as reporting units.

Article 39
Persons employed at the Office and the authorised bodies for a definite or an indefinite period of time, as well as persons engaged on the basis of working contracts or written authorisations in the area of individual data collecting or that, during their work, have access to individual data are hereby obliged to treat these data as official secret. This shall be valid both during these persons` engagement and after that, or during these persons` engagement under working contracts.

Persons mentioned in Paragraph 1 of this Article shall be informed on their responsibilities with respect to personal data protection prior to the beginning of their tasks` implementation.

Article 40
Following the completion of data processing, individual data collected and processed for statistical purposes shall be stored and kept until publishing the final results.

As an exception, the data mentioned in Paragraph 1 of this Article may be kept much longer in favour of purposes specified in Article 35, Paragraph 3 of this Act.

Article 41
Submitting of individual data collected for statistical purposes to a third party shall be implemented only in cases where such data are to be used for statistical research set up by the Programme of Statistical Research only, and where protection of the same has been ensured.

As an exception of Paragraph 1 of this Article individual data, without identification data on the reporting units, shall be provided for Scientific Institutions in favour of science, only if data user ensures all protection measures prescribed by this Act and by other relevant acts.

In case of releasing data in accordance with Paragraph 1 and 2 of this Article parties concerned shall sine a contract in written. The users themselves shall reimburse the costs for releasing the data completed in accordance with Paragraph 2 of this Article.

Article 42
Access to using the results of statistical research shall be provided or the results of statistical research shall be made publicly available only under the condition that identification of the person(s) and legal entity (entities) to which they relate has been prevented, unless the data subject has previously given written agreement thereon.

Article 43
To provide for the protection of the confidentiality of individual data collected for statistical purposes, measures shall be taken in connection with preventing unauthorised access, submitting or processing; in addition, measures shall be taken in connection with preventing the destroying, losing, changing, misusing or unauthorised using of data.
The Director of the Office and the manager of the authorised bodies shall set the measures and techniques for maintaining the safety of data collected according to the Programme of Statistical Research.

Advance Release Calendar is covering the monthly dissemination of Press Releases and it is made public through distribution of leaflets to users, in the Library of the Office and on the website.

A catalogue of publications is available on the website.

Macedonian, English.

Different forms, including on-line.

As yet, access to micro data for researchers is not organised or allowed by the State Statistical Office.