Data Dissemination: Responding to Challenges of Official Statistics

--Speech at FSO/NBS/KNSO Joint Seminar
on Strategies for Statistical Agencies
 in Meeting Future Information Demands

Bonn, July 6 and 7, 2005

Li Deshui, Commissioner
National Bureau of Statistics of China

It is a great pleasure for me to witness today a successful moment when the Joint Seminar on Strategies for Statistical Agencies in Meeting Future Information Demands is organized by the statistical agencies of Germany, Korea and China. This seminar creates a nice forum for the managements of the statistical agencies and other specialist of our three countries to exchange and discuss our ideas on the issues with regard to how to respond to future challenges. Today’s world has further increased its momentum of economic globalization while individual countries are faced with far-reaching changes in their economic and social environment. As a result, there exist great opportunities and challenges that official statistical systems have never met before. Data dissemination is also faced with many opportunities and challenges. What we shall do and what we can do with them have to be answered.

I wish to take up these issues on this occasion but with special emphasis on data dissemination of official statistics.

I. Data Dissemination as an Important Component of Official Statistics

1.1 Importance of data dissemination in the work of official statistics

We may divide the statistical work into four main phases: Planning, dada collection, processing and dissemination. We may also regard the first three phases as the basic ones of the statistical work or as the production ones of statistical information while dada dissemination and utilization are the final objectives of the statistical work. The more widely used the statistical information is, the better role is played by the statistical system. Data dissemination is important as it is the basic requirement for appropriate use of statistical information and also is a communication bridge between the statistical agency and the user communities. Data dissemination helps the official statistical agencies provide the user communities with the statistical information that it has produced while the user communities will feedback their new data requirements to the official statistical agencies and help find weaknesses and problems with the statistical work. The interactions between the statistical system and user communities will thus push forward the restructuring of the official statistical organization and continued improvement of the methodology.

1.2 Development of the ways of data dissemination of official statistics

With the social development and technical progress, the ways of data dissemination have been developing from direct personal contacts to paper communications by mails, books and newspapers, to cable communications by telephone, facsimile and broadcasting, and to dimensional communications with traditional media and modern electronic media of networks, digital technology and CD-ROM. The data dissemination is having increasing amounts of information, increasing reach-out, increasing efficiency and increasing transparency.

1.3 Development of data dissemination of China’s official statistics

China’s practice in data dissemination has experienced a process of gradual opening. China released a few indicators in its Statistical Communiqués in the 1950s and published a booklet of China in Ten Years in 1959 while other statistical information was not released. The exaggeration in official statistics prevailed in 1958 and lead to false information releases and to a distrust of official statistical information by the public. In the 1960s, China terminated its release of the Statistical Communiqués except for a few unrelated indicators dispersed in different articles on newspapers. During the period of the Cultural Revolution between 1966 and 1976, serious setbacks took place with China’s political, economic, social, science and technology and other areas. The official statistical system collapsed or almost collapsed, and as a result, data dissemination could not survive. After 1978 when China launched its economic reform programme, the official statistical work quickly recovered and developed, and as a result, data dissemination has gradually been going to normal. In 1979, the publication of Statistical Communiqués was resumed. Since the 1980s, apart from the regular publications of Statistical Yearbook, Statistical Abstracts, subject matter statistical yearbooks and others, statistical information has been disseminated on a regular basis with the newspapers and web sites of the National Bureau of Statistics of China. Press conferences have become an important channel for data dissemination. The NBS and provincial statistical offices hold individual quarterly press conferences to release statistical information of earlier quarters and answer questions raised from domestic and foreign journalists. China’s participation in the IMF-initiated GDDS in 2002 and the development of dissemination calendar show that China’s data dissemination has oriented towards transparency and standardization.

II. New Challenges for Data Dissemination of Official Statistics

2.1 Main Features of the New Era

There are four main features of out time. The first feature is the rapid development of the information technology. Digitalization, networking and other kinds of modern information technology have maintained a closer relationship among nations and among individual people. It is easy now for to people to communicate with each other thousands of miles away. The second is the regional cooperation and economic globalization for common development. Economic and trade relations among nations, international capital flow, internationalized business of transnational companies and international distribution of industrial activities have resulted in a closer economic relationship between one nation with another. The third is the individualized needs. Greater importance than ever before has been attached to the user’s needs and particularly the needs of individual users. The fourth is the dynamic development of economic and social activities with rapid updating of knowledge and technology.

2.2 New Challenges and Opportunities

There are a number of new challenges for the data dissemination. The first is the new requirement for timely statistical information. The dynamic tempo, individualization and diversification of life require the data dissemination of official statistics to follow its development and provide timely statistical information, which shall present complete and objective pictures of the economic development and social progress and shall meet the requirements made by different interest groups of the society.

The second is the wider reach-out of the official statistics. The development of information technology and economic globalization make it necessary and possible for the official statistics to expand its dissemination out of its national boundaries to other countries in the world. The statistical information now reaches the public of its own country as well as those of other countries.

The third is the diversified data requirements which are changing irregularly in terms of their directions, modes and tempo. Data users require the official statistical system to provide not only domestic statistics of the country but also statistics produced for other countries. They need not only the final statistical products but also the information for its production, including sources and methodology adopted. On the other hand, however, the general public have little knowledge of statistics which may also give negative impacts on dissemination. Much information released reflects averages, and an example is per capita income. Some people, however, like to compare the averages with their own conditions which may lead to groundless complaints of statistical information.

The new era has provided new opportunities for data dissemination of official statistics as well. First of all, the rapid progress of the modern technology and especially the information technology have made new technical infrastructure available for dada dissemination. Secondly, the ever-increasing development of the economic globalization makes mutual exchanges and cooperation more necessary among the statistical agencies of individual countries, and will strongly push forward the data dissemination.

III. Increased Cooperation for Challenges

3.1 Cooperation Areas of Official Statistics

The new era has provided extensive areas of international cooperation for data dissemination of official statistics.

Firstly, closer international cooperation in methodology, concepts and definitions and other areas will improve the comparability of statistical data. Without comparability, data produced in these countries will be irrelevant to the others.

Secondly, official statistical agencies shall encourage the exchanges of statistical information among different countries, improve the timeliness and transparency of data dissemination and build up an international data-sharing system for official statistics.

Thirdly, official statistical agencies shall promote the cooperation in the area of informatics and develop globalized instruments for data collection, processing and dissemination of official statistics collected by different countries. The construction of informatics system can be regarded as one of the basic tools for current official statistical agencies. We shall get the tool ready for international data dissemination of official statistics by encouraging their international cooperation in informatics development among official statistical agencies, and speeding up of the construction of an international data-sharing platform.

3.2 Measures to Deal with Challenges

Since 1978 when China launched its economic reform programme, China had made tremendous achievements in the development in its economic development. Since China’s entry into the World Trade Organization, Chinese government has played a more active role in the world economy and got more integrated with the world economy. China cannot separate itself from the world community. China’s economy has got integrated with the world economy. In fact, China has become one of the main components of the production chain of the world economy.

On the other hand, the world needs China as well. China’s participation in the IMF-initiated General Data Dissemination System (GDDS) demonstrated its intention and efforts towards meeting the mutual needs. However, though it has tried its efforts to get integrated with the international statistical community, China’s official statistical system still has a long to go before it can reach the standards other statistically developed countries, participate in the IMF-proposed Special Data Dissemination Standards (SDDS) and meet the requirements of both the domestic and international users. Therefore, it is important for the NBS to continue its efforts to strengthen its cooperation and exchange programmes with the Federal Statistical Office of Germany, the National Statistical Office of Korea and other national statistical agencies. With our own efforts plus such programmes, we will study and make use of the successful practice of other official statistical systems in statistical development and, in particular, in the area of data dissemination. These experience will no doubt be very helpful for the restructuring of China’s statistical system, improve the quality of the entire production process of China’s statistics, speed up the pace of China’s statistical system getting more integrated with the international practice, and eventually push forward the development of China’s official statistics.

In this context, the NBS will develop China’s present statistical system into a modern system which takes into consideration China’s particular conditions and produces its statistical products following internationally recognized standards. This system shall include an effective organizational structure; an efficient data collection system; a large contingent of professionals with good statistical knowledge, professional ethics and creativity; and a law enforcement mechanism. This system shall have the information technology well applied in its production and dissemination.

The informatics system of China’s official statistics is taking shape. The network covering China’s statistical system is close to its conclusion. It has covered towns and townships for statistical purposes in economically developed coastal provinces while covering all the counties already in Western less developed provinces. Statistical offices at the central, provincial and local levels have developed both Internet and Intranet. The Internet website of the NBS are receives about 200 thousand visits everyday from its clients. The NBS also receives a large number of enquiries through its website. The NBS has asked its staff to make replies to such enquiries within 24 hours.

The NBS will make greater publicity of statistical methodology and concepts, popularize statistical knowledge, and increase the transparency of the official statistical work. The public shall not only get access to updated statistical information, but also knows the definitions, collection and processing of the information.

In April this year, the NBS/World Bank Joint Research Team held a seminar in Beijing on statistical information services and the representatives of government offices, businesses and other user groups made many valuable proposals, which are very helpful for the improvement of the data dissemination of China’s official statistics. In August this year, the NBS will hold a joint seminar in Beijing together with the US Large Enterprises Association on better statistical services to enterprises.

In addition, the statistical data centre of the NBS will be constructed and open to the public by the end of this year. The centre includes electronic reading rooms, a library, historic archives, telephone consultation facilities and specialist consultation department. The NBS hopes that all those facilities will provide all-round quality services for all kinds of users.

Since official statistical information is collected from the public, it should be used by the public. The existence of the official statistical system lies with its services to the public. China’s statistical system receives its better understanding, support and cooperation of the public only when the public feel that official statistics is part of their life. Therefore, it is of vital importance for China’s statistical system of do a better job with data dissemination.

Ladies and gentlemen,

We live in a time for dynamic development and economic globalization. The official statistics needs to make great efforts to go to meet users’ requirements for more and better statistics. Let us make our joint efforts to enforce our cooperation and exchange and further develop official statistics of individual countries and of the world as a whole in order that the official statistics will describe and interpret the economic and social development of the world in the 21st century and make contributions to the better understanding among individual countries and to the progress of the mankind civilization.

Thank you very much.