Abstract
During the last few years, coordination and cooperation in the production of official statistics have been emphasised in the international statistical community. Updated versions of quality frameworks strengthen coordination as a key for improving the quality of official statistics. Quality requirements for such statistics have been clarified. This is also reflected in amended or new statistical legislation.
In Norway a new statistics act was adopted in 2019, prescribing a multiannual programme for official statistics. The first draft programme has been prepared by Statistics Norway in cooperation with other producers of such statistics. It was adopted by the Government at the end of 2020. The programme defines requirements for and the content of official statistics, and which authorities will be responsible for the production of these statistics.
This paper considers how a programme for official statistics can promote coordination, cooperation and quality improvements of official statistics. Preparing the programme for Norway has revealed some challenges which are discussed. These comprise issues linked to professional independence and impartiality of producers of official statistics and the relationship between official statistics and management information. Reflections on these challenges and how they are resolved are important to establish a good understanding of the concept “official statistics”.
Introduction
Technological developments with new data and new producers of statistics provide both opportunities and challenges for official statistics and the national statistical institutes. Internet and open data facilitate access to data. This has led to an abundance of available data and statistics. Analysing and disseminating data and statistics have also become easier.
This can contribute to better information and decisions, but unfortunately also to misinterpretations and misuse of data and statistics.
These developments have created a need for reconsidering the content of official statistics and the role of producers of such statistics. Will official statistics be important at all, and how can it be distinguished from data, other statistics, analyses and fake news?
Sæbø et al. [1] have considered how official statistics can provide a safeguard against fake news. Answers to this comprise new statistical legislation emphasising professional independence and other quality criteria for official statistics, cooperation, quality control and branding of such statistics.
In the present paper, the emphasis is on coordination, to improve compliance with quality criteria for all official statistics. The main purpose is to discuss how a programme for official statistics, through enhanced coordination and focus on quality criteria, can promote trust in such statistics. It is based on recent experiences with establishing such a programme in Norway, following the adoption of our new statistics act [2]. First, some general considerations are given about official statistics and requirements for such statistics.
The programme was developed during the period of the COVID-19 crisis. This affected the work in two ways. It demonstrated the need for new statistics and their quality, and it changed the way of cooperation and how to coordinate producers of official statistics without physical meetings. Some considerations on these issues are incorporated in the paper.
Official statistics
Historically, there has been no internationally agreed definition of official statistics. It is a national responsibility to define the scope of a country’s national statistical system [3], and hence defining and delimiting its official statistics. However, in many countries the label “official” has pointed at quality statistics produced by central public institutions, foremost the National Statistical Institute (NSI).
A modern definition describing requirements for official statistics can be found in the UN National Quality Assurance Frameworks Manual for Official Statistics [3]: “Official statistics describe, on a representative basis, economic, demographic, social and environmental phenomena of public interest. Official statistics are developed, produced and disseminated as a public good by the members of the national statistical system in compliance with the UN Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics and accepted quality frameworks such as the UN NQAF, as well as other internationally agreed statistical standards and recommendations. In many countries, official statistics are defined and described in statistical programmes”.
In the EU and the European Economic Area (EEA) including Norway the European Statistics Code of Practice (ES CoP) [4] is the basis for the quality requirements for official statistics.
For many of the ES CoP principles there is a need to balance compliance between them. The tradeoffs that come most readily to mind are those between accuracy, timeliness and cost effectiveness. Working on editing data used for statistics production improves accuracy but increases costs and may affect timeliness negatively. However, principles linked to the institutional environment are normally laid down by law. They comprise the professional independence and impartiality of the statistical institutions, transparency, mandate for data collection and statistical confidentiality. Requirements for official statistics should therefore include (at least) these principles. Sæbø and Holmberg [5] have discussed challenges in official statistics linked to trade-offs between the EC CoP principles including these requirements.
Radermacher describes the interactions between data, facts and policy/politics [6]. Statistics and a statistical programme have a role in transforming data to facts. It is important to distinguish official statistics from data, but also from policy formulation. Official statistics should be policy relevant, but not politically driven [6]. In a programme for official statistics, these statistics must be balanced against more detailed data but also against analyses that can cast doubt on the producer’s professional independence or impartiality.
The new Norwegian Statistics Act
The European Statistical Law [7] reinforces the independence of NSIs and other national authorities responsible for European statistics. The second round of European peer reviews in 2013–2015 for several countries recommended actions linked to legal aspects, to strengthen their professional independence and clarify the content of “official statistics”. For Norway, a recommendation was to amend the statistical legislation.
The new Norwegian Statistics Act was adopted by the Parliament in June 2019. It has been implemented gradually until 2021 when a national programme for official statistics is put into effect. The European Statistical Law [7] is implemented in the EEA Agreement Annex XXI (on statistics) and is included in Norwegian law as a regulation to the Norwegian Statistics Act.
The purpose of the act is to promote the development, production and dissemination of official statistics with a view to increasing public knowledge, and providing a basis for analysis, research, decision-making, and general discussion in society.
The new act defines statistics as “quantified information about a group or phenomenon, and which is obtained by aggregation and processing information about the different units of the group or a sample of these units, or through systematic observation of the phenomenon” [2].
The act states that the Government (“King-in-Council”) shall approve the establishment of a multi-annual national programme for official statistics that is suitable for fulfilling the purposes described in the act. The programme will stipulate which statistical activities shall be covered and which public authorities are responsible for the statistics. This means that official statistics are those covered by the programme and only those.
The following requirements for official statistics are given in the act:
Official statistics shall be developed, produced and disseminated in an independent, impartial, objective, reliable and cost-effective manner. The development, production and dissemination of official statistics shall be based on uniform standards and harmonised methods. The statistics shall be relevant, accurate, timely, punctual, accessible and clear, comparable and coherent.
These requirements are compliant with those in the corresponding European legislation and the ES CoP.
The coordinating role of the NSI, which was also strengthened in the European Statistical Law, was also clarified in the new Statistics Act in Norway. The following excerpts [2] from the act describe the coordinating role of Statistics Norway:
Statistics Norway shall coordinate all development, production and dissemination of official statistics in Norway. Statistics Norway shall produce an annual public report to the Ministry of Finance regarding the quality of official statistics. The Ministry shall appoint a committee for official statistics, whose members mainly represent authorities who are responsible for official statistics. The committee shall be led by Statistics Norway. A proposal for a statistics programme shall be drawn up by Statistics Norway, in consultation with the Committee for Official Statistics (see next chapter). The users of statistics shall be consulted before the programme is approved. Statistics Norway shall have overall responsibility for international statistical cooperation.
The Norwegian statistical system
Norway has a relatively centralised statistical system with Statistics Norway as the main actor.
Another feature of the Norwegian statistical system is that statistics to a large extent are based on administrative data systems or registers. Statistics Norway uses more than 100 such registers from more than 30 public institutions as a basis for its production of statistics. Statistics Norway has agreements of cooperation with these institutions, and structured quality reports exist for all registers used for its production of statistics.
At the same time most owners of these registers produce statistics for their own purposes for sectoral and result oriented management. This may appear as overlapping or double work. This is addressed in the programme for official statistics.
Important producers of what was originally assumed to be official statistics are members of the Committee for Official Statistics together with some important owners of administrative registers. This committee consisted of 24 public institutions in 2020.
Ljones [8] addresses the professional independence of official statistics in relation to a register based statistical system. Use of administrative registers as sources for such statistics is efficient if the variables in the registers are consistent with those needed for this purpose. However, it requires clarification of responsibilities and “some distance” between the producer and the user of statistics for management purposes. Transparency on roles is important. This is considered in chapter 5.3 where official statistics and management information are discussed based on the experiences from the work on the national programme for official statistics in Norway.
Programme for official statistics
Objectives and scope
Public trust in Statistics Norway is considered high, though there have been some challenges in recent years linked to reorganisations and frequent changes in leadership [5].
A programme for official statistics shall promote trust in official statistics by emphasising official statistics as a reliable common fact base for the Norwegian society. It shall make official statistics more visible and accessible and promote and contribute to quality assurance of such statistics. The programme shall assure that the production of statistics is prioritised according to the user needs. It shall promote efficiency by improved division of labour and reduced response burden.
The process of establishing the programme itself promotes cooperation in the statistical system to improve quality and efficiency. In this process which involves defining and delimiting Norwegian official statistics the following issues have appeared:
What are the minimum requirements for official statistics? This triggers questions such as:
How should the professional independence and impartiality of producers which normally have other main tasks than production of statistics be assured? What distinguishes official statistics from sectoral management information? What does it mean to be responsible for the production of official statistics? The distinction between statistics and analyses. How should a multi-annual programme be detailed enough to cover and delimit all official statistics, but be flexible enough to permit necessary changes during the programme period?
The first programme will be valid for the period 2021–2023. Considerations on the issues and challenges met in the process of establishing this programme follow in the next chapters.
Requirements for official statistics
The requirements for official statistics are described in or can be deduced from the requirements in the Statistics Act stated above in chapter 3. Such statistics need to be of general interest and fulfil the quality requirements in the ES CoP [4].
Professional independence and impartiality can be considered as core values of official statistics. Compliance with these principles are often debatable when it comes to producers of statistics outside the NSIs.
What does professional independence mean? The indicators in the ES CoP mention the responsibility of the NSIs and Eurostat for ensuring that statistics are developed, produced and disseminated in an independent manner, in other words how statistics are produced and disseminated, but not what or which statistics should be produced. What statistics should cover is determined by user needs, ensuring that statistics are “fit for purpose”.
Professional independence is not sufficient to assure public trust, the producers need to act impartially and be objective as well. It is not easy to measure professional independence and impartiality, but there are some schemes or measures that should be in place to fulfil these principles. The producers themselves shall decide how their statistics are to be produced and published, and when they should be disseminated. In ES CoP this is formulated by indicators that support independence and impartiality:
Publishing dates and times for statistics are announced in advance. In other words, equal and simultaneous access for everyone. A good practice is a release calendar where the publishing date is fixed at least 3 months in advance as well as according to a fixed daily publishing time. Full transparency about data sources and production methods. In other words, such aspects are documented and made publicly available.
Official statistics must be clearly visible and easily accessible on the websites of the responsible institutions.
Exceptions to the rule of equal access may be made, but according to the ES CoP such exceptions should be well justified and made public. Statistics Norway has a few exceptions, when collaborating with other institutions on statistics, but only for production and quality assurance purposes.
In some countries, some users like the government or the press have access to official statistics before others. This often applies to official statistics produced by other authorities than the NSIs. Georgiou has discussed the pre-release of official statistics to some users and concluded that such release is not consistent with professional statistical ethics [9]. Trewin argues that limited pre-release of statistics to government and media under embargo to prepare for comments may be an advantage [10]. Such pre-release would be difficult to control in a statistical system with several producers of official statistics, and the Norwegian programme for official statistics shall only comprise statistics which will be made available simultaneously for all users.
Georgiou has also argued that professional independence alone is not enough, introducing the concept institutional independence as a precondition for professional independence in practice [11]. That means that all statistical authorities should belong to a separate branch of government. Trust has been high in Norwegian official statistics, and this has never been considered as necessary, though several of the measures to ensure professional independence such as those linked to legislation considered by Georgiou are considered and taken into account through the implementation of the Statistics Act.
Statistics reported to Eurostat as “European statistics” on the basis of EU-acts included into the EEA-Agreement annex XXI shall be Norwegian official statistics covered by the Norwegian national programme for official statistics. This has been assumed during the preparations for the Statistics Act, and it is both reasonable and practical that the coordination of statistics in Europe and Norway (beyond what is European statistics) is based on the same principles and routines.
It is also reasonable that other important statistics reported to and used by the European Union and international organizations such as the UN and the OECD are official statistics, given that they are part of an international statistical programme. The same applies to most statistics compiled in connection with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) [12]. It is an objective that information from the national statistical systems shall be applied in the global reporting on progress related to the SDGs.
All producers of official statistics will have to comply to quality requirements but also gain some rights, in particular linked to more data sharing within the statistical system that will improve efficiency and quality.
Statistics Norway will perform quality control both in Statistics Norway and of other producers of such statistics. Annual self-assessments based on the ES CoP are planned. This will be supplemented by more detailed quality reviews, an arrangement that already exists within Statistics Norway, see [13, 14]. Meetings with users are included in these reviews. The European Statistics Peer Reviews will fit in with this arrangement. They can be seen as a part of the quality assurance mechanism for Statistics Norway and some of the other producers of European and hence Norwegian official statistics. As prescribed in the Statistics Act, Statistics Norway shall produce an annual report to the Ministry of Finance regarding the quality of official statistics.
Official statistics and management information
The general interest of official statistics distinguishes it from detailed management information, although many official statistics can also be used as management information. Such management information is not subject to the quality requirements for official statistics. In addition, the following points could be used to distinguish official statistics from management information:
Prevalence. Official statistics should basically cover all sectors and the entire breadth of Norwegian society. Degree of detail (geographical and/or sectoral). Statistics compiled primarily for management purposes will often be presented at a lower level of aggregation and with a greater degree of detail than official statistics. Use of internationally agreed statistical standards such as definitions and classifications. Do the statistics fit in a coherent statistical system? Official statistics in a specific domain typically apply definitions and other standards that are coherent with other official statistics in other domains and therefore can be considered part of a broader system.
Other institutions than the NSIs have other primary tasks than the production of official statistics, and most of them can potentially be instructed by their superior authority in all matters. However, while an administrative body is typically not independent, the unit or persons within these bodies that are responsible for producing official statistics should decide on how to produce and when to disseminate its statistics independently. Even so, this may be a challenge not only due to the possible influence from political authorities, but also because administrative bodies may be managed according to objectives with statistical measures, and certain statistical results will be in their own interest. The police authority could for example have an interest in focusing statistics showing that crime is reduced to show good results of their work, but the opposite can also be the case to substantiate a demand for more resources.
Even if the statistics producers behave impartially, the public may suspect that they are not impartial if there is a system where their statistics are used to measure their own performance. In the programme for official statistics only authorities or rather parts of authorities that can show or substantiate that they are professionally independent and act impartially will be responsible for official statistics.
Use of standards is another issue where statistics produced by the owner of administrative registers for their own purposes often differ from corresponding statistics produced by Statistics Norway. Use of internationally harmonised statistical definitions and classifications is necessary for international comparisons. This is something authorities outside the NSI must take into account if they are going to produce official statistics. Statistics Norway has a role in promoting the use of statistical standards.
Responsibilities
Basically, there are three types of responsibilities which have been considered and distinguished when establishing the programme:
Coordination and production of official statistics. This is the main task of Statistics Norway. Management and administration of sectors including the provision of information (such as statistics). This is the role for most other national authorities. Policy formulation. This is normally the responsibility of political authorities supported by the ministries.
In the process of establishing the programme Statistics Norway had to clarify that responsibility in this context applies to the responsibility for the production of official statistics mentioned in the first bullet point, which should be separated from the responsibilities under sector management or policy formulation even if producing statistics is one of the tasks of the authority in question.
It also turned out that it was necessary to clarify the distinction between a database or a register and statistics, and also between a dissemination portal as such and the statistics included in the portal. Most of the other producers of statistics are owners of data and administrative registers covering their areas of responsibility, and several also have a portal comprising statistics from different producers covering these domains. Official statistics can be included among other statistics in the portals, but neither the registers nor the portals are statistics as such.
An authority responsible for official statistics must be responsible for the complete production chain from data collection to dissemination. This does not prevent the authority from outsourcing parts of the production, but it will still be responsible that the statistics comply with the necessary quality requirements for such statistics.
Funding of official statistics alone does not normally qualify for the role of being a responsible producer. Some of Statistics Norway’s official statistics are funded directly from ministries as work on commission, but Statistics Norway is still the responsible producer.
Analyses
Users often demand analyses. Analyses add value to and make statistics more relevant. Analysis is a tool to explain statistics and their impact, by presenting them in a theoretical framework combining data from different sources, interpreting data, and identifying possible causes and effects. Experiences from quality reviews in Statistics Norway [13] tell us that users very often ask for better coherence and interpretations of statistics a broader context, which can be achieved by simple analyses of trends and comparisons with other statistics. Such analyses should be regarded as a part of official statistics. Analyses also include modelling and more substantive analyses, such as making projections. With the exception of population projections which always have been regarded as a part of official statistics, these analyses are currently not considered official statistics. An analysis by a statistical institute shall anyway not advocate policies or take partisan positions.
Description of official statistics
The description of statistics in the programme must be detailed enough to delimit official statistics in a meaningful way. It must be possible to clarify responsibilities where there are several producers of such statistics in the same domain. On the other hand, the descriptions should not be too detailed since it is a multi-annual programme and there is a need for some flexibility during the programme period. This means that the programme itself does not necessarily contain information on each single statistic included, since statistics can change over the programme period. But Statistics Norway will keep and update records on changes to the statistics included in the programme during the programme period, with information on responsible authority, frequency, international reporting requirements, data sources and funding.
In developing the programme, it has been necessary to consider and start with the statistics as they are at the beginning of the programme period. These may vary with respect to degree of detail, from what can be presented in one table to a collection of tables and figures. In practice, a single statistic will have to be associated with publishing, and thus be included in a release calendar. Statistics are accompanied with a set of metadata, such as frequency (e.g. annual, quarterly or monthly) and geographical or other degree of detail. Frequency and granulation are examples of properties of statistics that may vary over the programme period.
The need for flexibility of the programme has been illustrated by the need for more frequent and timely statistics to understand and shed light on the COVID-19 pandemic and its effects on the society. Statistics Norway has for example started to publish monthly statistics on earnings, weekly statistics of deaths and of foreign trade in goods, and daily statistics of bankruptcy. These statistics are regarded as experimental. They have not reached full maturity in terms of harmonisation, coverage or methodology and other quality dimensions than timeliness may be questioned (accuracy may for example be affected by time lag). However, the programme must be flexible enough to cover such developments.
The definition of statistics given in the Statistics Act and cited in chapter 3 provides no clear answer to the scope of each statistic. A pragmatic approach on this has turned out to be convenient. However, it is important to distinguish between statistics that are aggregations of data and (micro) data.
In the programme, official statistics have been grouped into themes according to the grouping of statistics on Statistics Norway’s website ssb.no, covering 21 thematic domains with 88 subdomains. These domains do not represent a standard classification or nomenclature of statistics, but rather a grouping adapted to user needs which is convenient in a programme like this.
During the process of developing the programme some of the thematic domains have been renamed, and some subdomains have been added to better account for statistics produced outside Statistics Norway and better reflect areas of great interest by users.
For each thematic domain, the significance of the theme and associated statistics is described in the programme. The descriptions of each subdomain comprise the purpose and content of the official statistics covered, main uses and users, possible EU-regulations on statistics in the subdomain and important reporting requirements to international organisations. Known developments and some development possibilities within the statistical domains during the programme period are briefly described.
The descriptions must be politically neutral. Statements that describe the situation in a domain as good or with challenges are avoided; the programme focuses on challenges linked to official statistics.
Some statistics cover several thematic domains. In the programme, such cases are described under the domains they primarily belong to, but with cross-references as needed. Greater cross-sectional activities such as a system for coordinated data collection from municipalities with associated statistics presented in a common portal, and Norwegian statistics supporting the UN sustainable development goals are described in separate chapters in the programme.
Statistics for specific geographical areas or groups of the population may be found in several statistical domains and sub-domains. This applies, for example, to statistics on Svalbard, on Sami areas and Sami people as well as parts of the statistics on immigrants. For example, statistics on immigrants’ relations with the labour market are covered under the domain Labour market and wages while statistics on immigration as a part of migration are covered under Population. This has caused some discussion since several of these issues are of great political interest. A proposal to emphasise Svalbard and other polar areas by establishing a separate thematic domain for these areas in the programme has been considered. However, this would have broken with the logic of the programme structure. The programme is not a dissemination channel aimed at users. In such channels as ssb.no there will anyway be entries for statistics under all thematic domains and issues of interest.
The total number of official Norwegian statistics included in the programme will be approximately 350 in 2021, of which Statistics Norway will be responsible for approximately 300.
The process
The process of establishing a Norwegian programme for official statistics has been coordinated by the international secretariat in Statistics Norway. The coordination has been supported by a project group with representatives from all departments producing statistics in the institution. The programme has been developed in consultation with the Committee for Official Statistics. Departments in Statistics Norway responsible for the different statistics have been central in organizing bilateral meetings with other candidates for producing official statistics. Such meetings were necessary for both Statistics Norway and other producers in order to clarify the requirements for official statistics and whether particular statistics should be included in the programme. In this regard it was important to consider authorities with statistics that may complement Statistics Norway’s own, i.e. in domains where Statistics Norway’s coverage is poor. However, also authorities that produce statistics in the same domains as Statistics Norway were considered.
Examples of domains where Statistics Norway only partly covers the need for official statistics are health and environment. Statistics Norway covers statistics on how the economy and human activity affect health and environment, to a less extent statistics on health (e.g. diseases) and environmental conditions. Statistics Norway is responsible for statistics on emissions, but not on climate for example. In such cases it is reasonable that other institutions are responsible for parts of the official statistics.
In some domains other authorities produce statistics based on their own data and legislation that overlap or are similar to Statistics Norway’s statistics. Discussions with these have covered the requirement for equal and simultaneous access to official statistics, the use of international statistical standards and the possibilities to add value to the statistics by linking data from other domains. In some domains with other producers of statistics (e.g. crime and education) Statistics Norway will be the producer of official statistics included in the first programme.
The process with meetings and clarifications with more than 20 potential producers of official statistics has been useful both for Statistics Norway and the other authorities. The first programme includes 11 authorities producing official statistics in addition to Statistics Norway. Some of them produce only one or a few such statistics The most important ones in this context are the Directorate of Fisheries, the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, the Norwegian Environment Agency, the Norwegian Labour and Welfare Administration and the Norwegian Directorate of Immigration. In addition to Statistics Norway, six authorities provide Norwegian statistics on different topics to Eurostat (European statistics).
The programme proposal has been subject to a public hearing administered by the Ministry of Finance, to ensure that also users of official statistics can provide their input. The hearing supported the need to clarify the issues discussed in this paper. In addition it led to strengthening the ambitions of the programme to address future needs for statistics linked to technology, globalisation, climate change and other crises such as pandemic diseases.
The programme was adopted by the Government at the end of 2020. However this will not put the producers’ professional independence in danger, since it will only describe which areas shall be covered by official statistics, not how the statistics shall be produced and disseminated.
There is also work underway with establishing a portal for official statistics. The portal will be integrated in Statistics Norway’s website ssb.no, but with links to the different authorities responsible for official statistics.
As already mentioned, the final work on the statistical programme coincided with the COVID-19 crisis. This affected the coordination of the work, which had to be based on work from home offices and meetings on digital platforms. Meetings in the Committee for Official Statistics were implemented by Cisco Webex and Microsoft Teams. The experiences with this are positive and the resulting programme is probably not affected much at all. However, the health authorities naturally had to prioritize their primary tasks and not future statistics in this period.
Lessons learnt
Coordination of other producers of official statistics is necessary but demanding. However, coordination within the NSI is important as well. It turned out that it is not always easy for the middle management of particular statistical domains to relate to statistics beyond their responsibility. In cases where several departments or divisions produce statistics in the same domain, close cooperation had to be facilitated by active involvement by central coordinators.
With respect to quality, the crucial challenges are linked to professional independence and impartiality for authorities outside Statistics Norway, in practice how to assure equal access to statistics.
Several producers outside Statistics Norway need to make the official statistics more visible and accessible.
Official statistics have to be distinguished from sectoral management information, and also from analyses beyond descriptive analyses.
It has been necessary to make clear that other statistics than official statistics are useful as well, the same applies to analyses adding value to statistics It is foreseen that more and new statistics will be included as official in the programme for the next period.
If Statistics Norway shall keep its position and remain the only producer of official statistics in the domains it covers, this in particular presupposes improved timeliness and in some cases added value by linking data from several sources and assuring a coherent national statistical system.
Conclusions
It is believed that the national programme for official statistics and the coordination efforts leading to this will lead to improved quality of such statistics in Norway. Other authorities responsible for such statistics have clarified their role as professionally independent and impartial producers. They will comply with the principle of equal access, develop a release calendar if they do not have one and actively relate their statistics to the other principles of the ES CoP. To keep its central position, Statistics Norway will have a pressure to improve coverage and quality of its products. This in particular regards timeliness.
Statistics Norway will also perform regular quality control of all Norwegian producers of official statistics, by self-assessments and quality reviews. The European statistics peer reviews will fit in and supplement these reviews. Quality controls will contribute to improvements, in advance by raising awareness and after the self-assessments and quality reviews by resulting in action plans that will be followed up.
The process has identified some double work that will be removed, thus leading to improved efficiency.
The work on the programme has undoubtedly led to raised awareness about official statistics which have been branded through the process and through the hearing and the adoption of the programme by the Government.
The process itself has been useful, good relations between all producers of official statistics and also other statistics have been established.
However, only the implementation of the statistical programme and the further process will show how successful the approach described in the paper has been.