Good governance in any organization calls for accountability and transparency. These words are so widely used that we might not even pay them much attention. But they are absolutely crucial for official statistics. Why?

Unless the processes and products of official statistics are totally transparent, they risk being useless – or worse, dangerous. Without knowledge of how they were made, people could accidentally or deliberately misinterpret them. To be able to interpret and apply statistics correctly, users need to know some key facts about them, called metadata—how were they gathered? When? Among what group of people? What were they asked? How were the raw data processed into the published statistics? As well as guiding correct interpretation, transparency fosters trust which, as we saw in Principle 2, is essential for statistics to be believable and useful. Producers of statistics want users to trust their numbers, but they don’t expect this to be blind trust – they know that they must earn it.

Statistics is often called the science of probability. Official statistics must therefore also be transparent about the probability attached to the figures they publish.How big and representative were the samples, and how confident can we be in the estimates? By publishing confidence intervals and quality assessments along with details of the methods used, producers of official statistics enable users to select appropriate statistics for their purposes and provide them with information on how to use and interpret them.

Being accountable to society goes far beyond publishing metadata. It entails being transparent and efficient in how public money is spent; ensuring a high level of professional capability among staff so that correct statistical methods are followed; and communicating with the public about the timing of statistical releases, revisions and correction of errors, and plans to start new statistical products or to change or discontinue existing ones.

Links to blogs from Statistics Finland's Partnership and Ecosystem Relations service area:

Statistics Finland

"Fundamental Principles of statistics into broader use in society" by Ms. Leena Storgårds "How on earth to identify reliable data?" by Ms. Outi Ahti-Miettinen