7.1 Introduction

This chapter covers how a national statistical office (NSO) can meet the needs of a range of users that include governments (central and local), research institutions, journalists and the media, businesses, educational institutions, and the general public.

Meeting user needs is an important aspect of quality assurance as covered by the United Nations National Quality Assurance Framework (UN NQAF) principle 2 ‘Managing relationships with data users, data providers and other stakeholders’. This principle states that statistical agencies should build and sustain good relationships with all their key stakeholders, including users, data providers, funding agencies, senior government officials, relevant community organizations, academia and the media. It notes that statistical agencies should have access to all data necessary to satisfy the information needs of society, that stakeholders are identified and consulted regarding their interests, needs and obligations, and that statistical agencies have a strategy, and institutional arrangements are in place to engage with their users.

As noted in the UNECE recommendations for promoting, measuring and communicating the value of official statistics (🔗), statistics are intended to be used to make an impact on society by contributing to and improving openness and transparency, while at the same time ensuring confidentiality and equal access to information.

Official statistics are a key source of evidence-based decision-making for both governments and private citizens. Official statistics have (in principle) the comparative advantage in that they are produced in professional independence based on scientific methods using rigorous quality criteria based on the United Nations Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics (UNFPOS).

There is an increasing demand for official statistics. In the past an NSO was generally the only producer of statistics: this is no longer the case. Today, there are also various types of users and many different dissemination channels, meaning that statistics are more widely accessed and come from different sources. This makes the task of meaningful user engagement more challenging, and an NSO consequently needs to develop strategies for engaging with the different users and responding to the increased expectations for data access in the age of the so-called “digital natives” – those who have grown up during the age of digital technology. These users are confident in their use of data and have high expectations of user interfaces, and they expect that data resources should be easy to find and simple to use. In addition, awareness creates demand, and the more data an NSO produces, and the better it is communicated and disseminated, the more the demand for data grows. The public has a legitimate demand that their information needs can be met conveniently and easily and asks for more customized products that are easy to use.

A high-profile example of such data needs is the monitoring of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) that respond to both international and national policy needs and the interest of the civil society and the general public. Official statistics are key to the monitoring of SDGs as well as national development policies across all sectors, such as health, education, the environment, economic and social. Users need statistics to develop, design, implement, monitor and adjust these policies. The need for statistics to support the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development has also contributed to the pressure on the NSOs, which play a key role in the coordination of the compilation of official statistics and SDG indicators.

NSOs are fully accountable to the public for the data they disseminate and need to manage relations and build trust with a number of different user types. Users today expect statistical information to address their specific needs and as the ubiquity of the Internet brings news and other information to users in real-time, people want immediate answers to their questions along with the data to back it up. Users may consider that all official statistics should be available immediately with no long delays between the collection of data and its publication. An NSO can be open to criticism if they are perceived to take too long to conduct their analyses and share analytical results and insights. This has the effect of increasing the burden on an NSO to meet the demand of users. Thus, an NSO needs to continuously identify and respond to user needs. Failure to do so can attract adverse feedback which can create a negative public image of the NSO. This may even lead users to turn to alternative data sources which may be of inferior quality and leave valuable datasets of official statistics underused.

An NSO requires a strategy on how best to engage with users, identify and respond to their requirements and issues as they arise, and to measure user satisfaction levels.

Such a strategy would ideally be approached in a coordinated way throughout a national statistical system (NSS), led by the NSO. A coordinated user engagement strategy for the NSO and the NSS can help share resources and reduce duplication of effort. As proposed by the Generic Law on Official Statistics (GLOS), the chief statistician may use the Statistical Council to set up advisory bodies with members from within and outside of the NSS to support such strategic activities as coordinating user needs.

Each user group has its own specific requirements that need to be addressed in the strategy so that it becomes possible to develop products and services that meet better specific user needs. Providing a good service can help motivate users to understand the value of official statistics and participate more fully in surveys, leading to better quality statistics. This is valid for all user categories.

Statistical messages must use precise concepts whose meaning is widely known to the public, and the statistical concepts should be familiar to users. For this reason, educating users to statistical concepts and language is necessary. NSO statisticians have an important role to play in educating users in their own domains.