The practices of Statistics Finland have received good scores from an international team of assessors. The assessment formed part of the peer review on the implementation of the European Statistics Code of Practice covering all countries within the European Statistical System, that is, all European Union Member States, and Norway, Iceland and Switzerland.
The European Statistics Code of Practice is a set of principles defining the criteria for high-quality statistics production. The principles relate to the social rights and obligations of a statistical authority, the quality of statistics production and statistical products as well as to the releasing of statistical data. Professional independence in matters concerning the contents of statistics and statistical methods, and a mandate for the collection of data are crucial determinants of the status of a statistical authority.
The peer review focused on the principles of the Code Practice that concern professional independence, mandate for data collection, adequacy of resources, quality commitment, statistical confidentiality, impartiality and objectivity, and accessibility and clarity of data.
The review was conducted by a team of three persons representing the statistical offices of Germany and the Czech Republic, and Eurostat, the Statistical Office of the European Communities. The review team assessed Statistics Finland's compliance with the principles by studying a wide array of documents, interviewing the personnel and hearing external stakeholders last August.
The assessment Statistics Finland received is among the best of the ones published thus far. Altogether 32 European statistical authorities, including Eurostat, will be reviewed, and 20 of the assessment reports have been published up to now.
According to the reviewers, Statistics Finland fully meets most of the criteria on the compliance with the Code of Practice. In co-operation with Statistics Finland the review team worked out a list of improvement actions that would still be needed. The identified targets for such actions included support for the implementation of the European Statistics Code of Practice in the activities of other producers of official statistics, improvement of the services offered to the users of data for research purposes, completion of metadata for electronically released material and development of a comprehensive service on the Internet for all Official Statistics of Finland.
The review report can be found at:
http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/portal/page?_pageid=2273,61904978&_dad=portal&_schema=PORTAL
Inquiries: Mr Jussi Melkas, Senior Adviser, Secretariat of Director General, +358 9 1734 2696, fistname.lastname@stat.fi
Last updated 2.11.2007
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