The 52nd session of the International Statistical Institute (ISI), which is the largest global non governmental organization (NGO) in the field of statistics, was held from 10 to 18 August 1999 in Helsinki.  Among the very large number of topics under discussion, the session brought to the attention of official statisticians some issues that are likely to be of keen interest for the Asia-Pacific region. Naturally, the secretariat has had to be very selective, virtually arbitrary, in picking out topic areas.  References to papers and discussions are given, as they are publicly available through a Web site hosted by Statistics Finland at http://www.stat.fi/isi99/, those interested can access them for further information.

Issues covered in this paper are the role of National Statistical Offices, the widespread importance of information technology, and the need to enhance statistical or, more broadly, quantitative literacy as a part of more general efforts to enhance literacy at global level.  Some selected contributions highlighted the above themes and contributed particularly to developing the discussion and illustrating trends that are going to affect the work of NSOs in the near future. 

About the role of NSOs, very illustrative is the paper (Discussion on Invited Paper Meeting 10: Organisation of National Statistical Institutes) by Mr Frederick W. H. Ho, Commissioner of the Census and Statistics Department, Hong Kong, China. Mr Ho emphasized the importance of trust and credibility for NSOs, underlining what the consequences are for NSOs lacking these two qualities.  He analysed good practices which would help NSOs gain more confidence among their national as well as international users, inviting NSOs to adhere to and take part in the process of developing international statistical standards and methodologies as one of the most important means to that end.  He also called for consistent application of methodologies across government agencies.

He also devoted particular attention to the relationship between private and public sectors in the production of statistics.  In his view, there is both competition and partnership between the two sectors. Existing phenomena, as for example contracting out some of the functions typically carried out by the NSOs, were seen as ways of strengthening the partnership.  On the competition side, he noted how "private sector statistical activities tend to produce figures and analyses faster and in more attractively packaged form than their public sector counterpart, while often being much less rigorous" and then invited "public sector statistical offices to take this competition seriously and increase their powers in all facets of the statistical process". A remark on the need for statistical authorities to maintain a control and coordination role was made.

Lastly, Mr Ho touched on the issue of information technology (IT). He noted how IT could be beneficial in the whole statistical process, from data collection to data analysis and dissemination.  He also underlined how IT can be cost effective for NSOs at a time when budgets have become very tight. Intelligent application of IT and proper choice and organization of raw data sources were, in his view, other elements of importance.

The other two invited papers for the session on "Organisation of National Statistical Institutes" were particularly enlightening: the first, by Carol Carson, Director of the IMF's Statistics Department, was titled "National Statistical Offices: Their Place in a Changing World" and the second, by Len Cook, Government Statistician of Statistics New Zealand, "Managing in a networked statistical system".

Ms Carson's paper aimed to explore new or emerging developments affecting official statistics in a democratic society and market-oriented economy, especially in the context of an increasingly globalized market economy. Firstly, she remarked on the relations between the Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics and efforts to update or establish statistical legislation in several countries; she also highlighted how the Principles are considered at the international level by NSOs as well as by international and supranational organizations.

She proceeded to list some developments affecting NSOs: the competition/partnership between private and public sector in the production (but not only the production) of statistics, coordination among agencies forming the national statistical system as a means to avoid duplication and increase sound management (the NSOs are not the sole producers of statistical data and, sometimes, discrepancies between official sources were noted), dissemination as a key function of a statistical system and, lastly, the need for an up-to-date statistical law to provide a legal basis for the operations of NSOs.

The third paper, by Mr Len Cook, placed more emphasis on the concept of knowledge management. In his view, as we move towards a knowledge society, NSOs could and should be an early centre of information management revolution in governments, given their role as part of the knowledge base of government.  He considered how integration of different sources could be achieved under the new networking environment that technological developments have made available to all government agencies.

The notions of scalability and portability of the current technological solutions were related to the possibility of a flexible investment and development approach.  Mr Cook felt that "even the poorest statistical offices should be able to adopt significant elements of the contemporary technology base", perhaps through the help of technical assistance programmes or bilateral exchanges.

The paper then described the advantages of survey-taking operations in this new networked environment and the use of statistical protocols, as used in New Zealand, to spread a code of sound statistical practices outside the NSO. Statistical protocols are directed to other government entities which are part of the networked statistical system and specify the objectives, the designs, operational activities and analyses of statistics.

A paper by Lynne Billard, Department of Statistics, University of Georgia, entitled "Statistics and Our Expanding and Shrinking World", presented under Invited Paper Meeting 14 "Information revolution and statistics in developing countries", contributes to consideration of the implications of technological developments for developing countries. She focused more on the broader concepts of information and knowledge, and the implications of the rapid transformation of traditional means of training, publishing and research to more computer-oriented methods.  Another aspect covered, explained by the computational power more easily available to users with modern PCs, was the development and use of methodologies allowing analysis of large data sets, statistical graphics, resampling methods and so on.

The final paper reviewed here was jointly contributed by Mr Luigi Biggeri and Mr Alberto Zuliani, heads of the Italian Statistical Society (SIS) and the Italian National Statistical Institute (ISTAT) respectively.  They contributed to a discussion on "The dissemination of statistical literacy among citizens and public administration directors".

Their comments focused first on the characteristics of today's information society, a concept also touched on in the papers by Mr Cook and Ms Billard, and the need for more quantitative thinking implied by the current evolution of society, with statistical information influencing the everyday life of citizens more than ever.  The importance of such quantitative thinking was evident when the government, public administrative units, politicians, trade unions, managers and citizens at large used this type of information for making their decisions.  The paper devoted particular attention to describing the needs for statistical literacy among citizens and among civil servants. It followed a more precise explanation of the meaning of statistical literacy, reaching the conclusion that more important than the dissemination of statistics for all would be the promotion of statistical literacy for all.  They highlighted how such an educational process should be based on a problem-solving approach and presented a summary of activities, some of them already undertaken, on the ISI's programme of promotion of statistical literacy.