4.1 Introduction#
The composition, structure, and governance modalities of a national statistical system (NSS) vary widely between countries. In many cases, this reflects the history of a specific country; how official statistics have become a regular function of the various parts of a national administration; how national statistical offices (NSOs), that have official statistics as their core function have been established; and how the various organizations engaged in the official statistics of a country have evolved to respond to user needs, technological changes, as well as to institutional changes.
For this reason, international standards leave the decision on how to organize official statistics to each country, and rather concentrate on standards for outputs, methods, definitions and terminology, and on the principles that govern all activities of official statistics (see Chapter 3 - The Basis of Official Statistics). This chapter examines those organizational issues for NSSs that can be derived from the principles and the definition of official statistics and how these principles are translated into institutional safeguards for the various actors in official statistics. In addition, cumulative experience in countries has allowed the international community of professional statisticians to derive lessons on both efficiency and credibility of the various organizational arrangements. These are presented in this chapter, along with their respective advantages and disadvantages.
This chapter aims to provide indications rather than recommendations, unless there is a clear basis such as The Generic Law on Official Statistics (GLOS) adopted in 2016 by the Conference of European Statisticians[^footnote1], the Generic Law on Official Statistics for Latin America (GLOS-LA) adopted in 2019 by the Statistical Conference of the Americas, and the Guidance on modernising statistical legislation, UNECE 2018 (🔗).
The title of this chapter includes the term “system”. In the context of this handbook, a national statistical system is composed of all public institutions that work on official statistics, entirely as is the case for most NSOs or partly as applies to many ministries or government departments. Ideally, the NSS should meet the following criteria:
Common legal base It has a common legal base: This would be the national law on official statistics (the statistical law), which applies to the NSO and all public institutions that are part of the NSS.
Common implementation framework The statistical law and lower-level legislation based on this law (together referred to as statistical legislation) are based on the UN Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics (UNFPOS) and contain the rules and modalities on how this system is operated in accordance with the UNFPOS and how it is governed. Because of the principle on professional independence, the rules of governance have to be specific for official statistics, and to a certain extent different from the rules of decision-making and governance that are generally applicable to the wider administration to which the statistical.
Based on UNFPOS The statistical law should oblige all producers of official statistics to apply the same set of standards, methods, and definitions based on international recommendations.
Defined function of leader As part of the rules of governance, the function of a leader of the entire NSS (hereafter called chief statistician) should be defined. The rules need to include provisions for appointment and termination of appointment specific to this role and necessary to ensure the chief statistician’s professional independence. The explicit legal basis for a leader of the entire NSS is necessary because, in a hierarchically organized set-up such as a national administration, it is the only way to confer professional authority to the chief statistician that stretches beyond the organizational units of which he or she is the superior. Across countries, there are various titles for characterising this position, which is suited to the respective official language and national administrative structure.
Most countries have one organization for which the development, production and dissemination of official statistics is the core function. The names of this organization differ among countries; in this handbook and in many countries, it is termed the national statistical office (NSO).[1] In general, the NSO is the main producer of official statistics (in reality, the share varies between almost 100% and less than 40%) and is responsible for major data collection and data processing activities for official statistics, including the population census.
Countries have found different ways of placing the NSO within their administrative structure and in a few cases as an autonomous agency outside the main branch of the executive. In most cases, the function of chief statistician is assigned to the head of the NSO. This chapter outlines the obligations and restrictions for the NSO and other producers in terms of institutional safeguards needed to meet the requirements of official statistics as laid down in UNFPOS. Other models of NSSs are also articulated in Chapter 4.3 – Organization of national statistical systems.