Statistika: Statistics and Economy Journal (Dec 2019)
Official Statistics between Past and Future
Abstract
In January 2019, the Czech Statistical Office representing its predecessors celebrated 100 years of existence. In the middle of 1990’s, the modern legal framework anchored independence of the State Statistical Service as a basic condition for its professional and impartial work. Although statistics is in principle a very conservative discipline, it needs to reflect changes in the economy and the society. We can now observe a change in the basic paradigm of the official statistics consisting in movement from a stovepipe model of statistical surveys to a modern data hub linking all kinds of data sources and using sophisticated statistical models. Targeted and understandable communication is an integral part of the statistical production process and a necessary condition for a statistical office to compete on the information market. The Czech Statistical Office started 15 years ago to redesign its statistical information system and the basic principles are still valid. In the future, we are going to further reduce statistical surveys, intensify usage of administrative and private held databases, and modernise dissemination tools.
