5.1 Introduction#
Data are everywhere, and as their volume grows, so does their importance and their value. Over the last 20 years, the volume of digital information in the world has doubled approximately every two years, due to exponential growth of digital devices. During the 20th century, national statistical offices (NSOs)[1] were significant data holders, and census microdata sets were “big data”. Now the proportion of total data that is held by, or even available to, NSOs is becoming smaller daily.
At the same time, we see the rise of a data culture, as part of a wider digital culture. New players appear in the data market, as data become a tradeable commodity and asset, and a whole new industry has emerged around extracting value, in the form of insights, from data. These players, their suppliers and customers, and even the data they hold, can be considered parts of a new data ecosystem.
The on-going digital transformation will benefit from increasingly integrated national data ecosystems, characterized by common data governance arrangements and common approaches and technologies for data use, sharing and reuse.
All of the above has profound implications for NSOs. On the one hand they are facing rising costs and other challenges to continue collecting data through traditional surveys, and on the other hand, new opportunities arise for leveraging new types of data and new technology for statistics production. In a more data-aware world, customers demand new, more granular, relevant and timely statistics. It is therefore natural for NSOs to look towards the evolving national data ecosystems as potential data sources, whilst recognising the need to review privacy and confidentiality standards to reflect the emergence of new data sources and integration methods, as well as growing public awareness of confidentiality issues.
Some NSOs are already responding to these challenges (see the case studies at the end of the chapter). There is a growing realisation that rather than just being passive consumers of data from the new ecosystems, maybe NSOs could, or even should, take a more proactive role in shaping these ecosystems. This will help to maximise their benefit in the provision of high-quality information for decision makers and the general public, and, therefore, their benefit to society as a whole.
Other emerging questions include how NSO engagement with the new data ecosystems may have an impact on:
The traditional roles and responsibilities of NSOs
The Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics (see Chapter 3.2 – UN Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics), and associated Core Values
Legal and institutional frameworks
National digital and data initiatives
National data governance frameworks
The culture of NSOs
And whether any of these need to adapt to better reflect new realities and opportunities.
This chapter explores emerging ideas on how NSOs can engage with, and even take a leading role in certain aspects of the governance of national data ecosystems. It considers the associated costs, benefits, opportunities and challenges, and attempts to identify good practices. Recognising that the starting point and the context is different in every country, this chapter doesn’t offer prescriptive guidelines, instead, it aims to help senior managers of NSOs to weigh-up the options available to them, and take informed decisions on their future strategy with respect to national data ecosystems.
Given the role of this Handbook as a tool for senior managers in NSOs, the primary focus of this chapter is on interactions between NSOs and national data ecosystems, to facilitate decision-making and adapt to the opportunities of evolving data ecosystems. However, it is also worth briefly acknowledging the existence of a similar issue at the international level. Some data sources (e.g. satellite data and data from large multinational enterprises) make more sense at the international level, and there is an emerging role for international organisations to broker access to, and even try to influence, such sources. As this phenomenon develops, the concept of international data ecosystems may merit a separate chapter of this Handbook.