Affiliations: Inspecteur Général de l'INSEE Honoraire,
3, cité Férembach, 75017 PARIS, France. E-mail:
[email protected]
Abstract: There are many examples in the contemporary history of official
statistics where statistical integrity has been undermined and the independence
of official statisticians threatened. As well as in the preparation of
statistical programmes, these threats may also concern the collection and
processing of data or the dissemination and analysis of aggregated data. Until
recently there has been no clear introduction of the concept of independence in
official and legal texts, contrary to what happened with the issues of
confidentiality. The first official international text recognising the
importance of independence was the Fundamental Principles for Official
Statistics adopted by the UN Statistical Commission in 1994. Since then, all
official statisticians and their stakeholders have progressively become fully
aware of the importance of the UN Fundamental Principles and recognised the
professional value of the concept of independence; several new approaches,
legal or pragmatic, have been adopted such as the implementation of Codes of
Good Practices, descriptive or prescriptive, organisation of peer reviews, or
more recently the creation of Independent Authorities to guarantee statistical
integrity (such as in the United Kingdom and France). The profession itself has
also proposed responses to maintain statistical integrity in the face of
political pressures or pressures coming from different lobbies. In spite of
these responses, many problems remain on the agenda: while both governmental
institutions and scientific nongovernment organisations (NGOs) have been
prolific for years in producing declarations and papers on "good practices", in
case of a serious attack on the independence of statistics or use of "bad
practices", most institutions, official or non-governmental, have had
difficulties in reacting appropriately and rapidly. Nevertheless there are
mechanisms to do so. Further, international institutions can provide guidance
(such as through the data dissemination initiatives promulgated by the
International Monetary Fund (IMF)). The International Statistical Institute
(ISI) some years ago re-established the Committee on Professional Ethics, which
has the mandate to alert the ISI Executive Committee on questions raised by the
statistical profession and to propose, should the occasion arise, opinions and
comments on particular cases where the integrity of statistics has been
questioned.
Keywords: Official statistics, defence of integrity and independence, good practices, fundamental principles, ISI Committee on Professional Ethics
