NSDS Mission and vision of the national system of official statistics

1. NSDSMission and vision of the national system of official statistics Jozef Olenski NSDS Seminar World Bank Ministry of Statistics and Analysis Minsk, 15 – 16 March 2007

2. The mission of the NSS as the layer of the information infrastructure of the country • The determining information standards for representation of social, economic, ecological and other phenomena and processes of real life, for all other infrastructural information systems • concepts and definitions, • classifications and nomenclatures, • indicators, methods of measurement, • criteria of quality of information, • Dissemination of statistical information and metainformation as the public good for the society, economy and governments • Contributing to the development of information culture of the society, businesses and governments by the participating in the process of education

3. Mission of official statistics to the society • Main mission of official statistics in this stage of development of the country is to support the development of information society in Belarus. • National statistical metainformation and parainformation bases accessible via websites, statistical call centres, • Public metadata bases covering: (a) glossaries of concepts and definitions, (b) classifications and nomenclatures, (c) statistical methods and procedures, (d) statistical standards for protection of data quality, confidentiality, integrity. • Public statistical databases on the website of Minstat: (a) basic statistical aggreates, (b) the database of aggregated macroeconomic indicators, (c) specialized branch - oriented databases, (d) specialized problem oriented and regional database systems. • Active participation of official statisticians in statistical education of the society, especially information on the NSS and the use of statistical information schools and for the students • Dissemination of statistical data and relevant statistical knowledge via mass media.

4. Mission of official statistics to the national economy • The objective of the NSS should be the protection of information symmetry of all subjects operating on the market by disseminating and supplying relevant statistical information and metainformation to businesses informing them on economic situation of the country as a whole, on the situation of particular branches of economy and regions, on the business cycles. • Minimization of the burdens of businesses and other organizations as the respondents: optimization of the scope of statistical information and minimizing the redundancy, replacing statistical questionnaires by the use of administrative records for statistical purposes, electronic data collection, optimization of sample surveys. • Dissemination of statistical metadata and methodological knowledge useful for more effective use of statistics by businesses. Providing analytical services for enterprises and for organization of enterprises. Local and regional statistical offices of the Minstat may play important role in providing statistical services to enterprises and other organizations.

5. Mission of official statistics to the governments • Active monitoring of information needs and anticipating the changes of the information requirements of central governments. Elimination of redundant and useless information in the process of programming the surveys. • Organizing the interchange of statistical data and metadata between the Minstat, ministries and regional governments; minimizing the redundancy and excessive differences and variety of indicators describing the same or similar economic and social phenomena. • Offering advanced analytical and information services to the experts and divisions in the ministries and regional governments by statistical offices of Minstat and statistical units of the ministries, including training, education and the research works provided by the Research Institute of Statistics. • Development of regional, urban and local statistics. This areas of statistics was heavily underdeveloped in the period of centrally planned economy. • The Minstat and other statistical units should support the program Electronic Belarus, supporting its realization by providing metadata standards for all infrastructural information systems of the country. • Special attention should be paid to the statistical support of the processes of government budgeting on national and regional levels..

6. Mission of official statisticsto R&D and education • The mission of the NSS is to monitor the information needs of those domains of research that use statistical data as their basis raw material for production of statistical findings, e.g. general economic research institutes and branch oriented economic institutes, institutes of social sciences, ecological research as well as R&D centers supporting the enterprises. The results of this monitoring should be implemented into practice in the process of the programming of surveys and in the data dissemination policy of the NSS (contents and scope of statistical databases, publishing policy, access to metadata). • Long terms goals of supporting the development of the information society in Belarus will be achieved by the contributing of official statisticians to the education, especially on secondary and university levels. It seems that nowadays systematic education of teachers on all levels of education should be given the priority. The knowledge of global and national statistical systems, on specificities of statistical methodology, on deontological principles of statistics, etc., is not common enough, even among those, who teach mathematical statistics at the universities and high schools.

7. Mission of official statistics to international organizations • Implementation of statistical standards recommended by international organizations, which the Belarus is taking part in. • Realization of statistical surveys recommended by international organizations, including statistical censuses. • Coordinated supply of statistical data on Belarus to international statistical organizations and information services. • Organizing the access of national users of data interested in international statistics, to respective foreign and international data bases and files. • Control of national data coherence, integrity and comparability with international standards, organizing the actions of bringing data to comparability and integrity in case of methodological changes. • Development of national methodologies in coherence with international statistical methodological recommendations and standards

8. Vision of the NSS in long term perspective The long term vision of the NSS should cover: • forecast of potential users of data and needs of other stakeholders of statistical processes and their profiles, • impact of globalization on statistical information systems and their functions, • expected development of modern ICT on information processes • expected development of relations between the NSS and its impact information systems, with special reference to e-governments and e-economy • organizational, institutional and legal issues and arrangements of information infrastructure of the country and the of official statistics, • role of official statistical standards in the information processes and information infrastructure of the state and the national economy, • information architecture of official statistics and statistical processes

9. Determinants of the vision of the NSS • globalization processes • open market driven economy • role of governments and institutions in the economy • development of information needs of businesses • use of modern ICT in the economy • e-government • development of information society • development of knowledge – based economy

10. Target functions of official statistical services • Integrattion of information resources of official statistics - ISIS • Information as the public good - dissemination of data and metadata,active information policy • Minimizing social and economic costs of information - optimization of data sources an data collection

11. Integrated information resources of official statistics • There is the need of developing the concept integrated system of data and metadata bases covering the whole statistical system, both centralized statistics and statistical services of ministries. • All metadata resources should be store in statistical metadata bases and should be accessible as the public good. • In modern ICT environment there are no technological constrains in archiving statistical data and metadata, including non aggregated data. • Statistical archives should be capable to store all input data for unlimited period of time. The access to non aggregated data should be strictly controlled, and the access to identifiable data should be strictly forbidden and technologically impossible.

12. Dissemination of data and metadata,active information policy • Active cooperation with mass media on all levels of the system (central, regional). • Websites of statistical offices providing metadata and data as public goods. • Personalized profiles of statistical data for special users (high level officials, experts, enterprises, researchers). • End user friendly data retrieval form statistical data bases, enabling the navigation of users in the resources of official statistics, both centralized and decentralized. • Dissemination of statistical knowledge for schools and universities on preferential basis. • Access to the resources of international statistical systems via links on the websites of statistical offices (Minstat, regional offices, statistical websites of respective ministries)

13. Optimization of data sources an data collection This target shall be realized in practice in following ways: • CATI and CAPI • Intelligent electronic questionnaires delivered to respondents • Collection of statistical data in electronic form via e-mail • Statistical portal for data collection • Use of administrative records for statistical purposes by selecting statistical data • Statistical data mining in administrative records of governments and enterprises • Optimizing the scope of collected data by reduction of redundancy

14. Conclusions – the role of official statistics in long term perspective • Integrating role of the NSS within the information infrastructure of the country, with special reference to the quality of social and economic information • Coordinating function of the Minstat as the central organ of official statistics of the country for statistical system and for statistical components in administrative information systems of governments and other organizations managing infrastructural information systems. • Active participation of the NSS in the projects of implementation modern ICT in the country, especially in the program Electronic Belarus. • Equal statistical rights and duties of main stakeholders of statistical system: governments, economic units and citizens. • Statistical information and metainformation as public goods available for the society. • Statistical education and cooperation with academia as the contribution of the NSS for long term development of information society and knowledge – based economy in Belarus.