Skip to main content
Disciplines
Automotive Business IT + Informatics Construction + Real Estate Electrical Engineering + Electronics Energy + Sustainability Insurance + Risk Finance + Banking Management + Leadership Marketing + Sales Mechanical Engineering + Materials
Events
DE
EN
Books
Journals
Topic Page
Marketing
Start single access now
Access for companies
EXTENDED SEARCH
Log in
Top
Published in:
Official Statistics—An Introduction Read chapter Read first chapter

2020 | OriginalPaper | Chapter

4. Official Statistics 4.0: The Era of Digitisation and Globalisation

Author : Walter J. Radermacher

Published in: Official Statistics 4.0

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

Log in

Activate our intelligent search to find suitable subject content or patents.

search-config
loading …

Abstract

What the future has in store for us is, not easily predictable. Certainly, foresight does not lie in the very nature of statisticians, who usually look in the rear-view mirror. Nevertheless, there are some trends or megatrends, the effects of which are not yet known in detail, to which one will undoubtedly have to adapt. Above all, because official statistics have the characteristics of an ocean liner whose course and speed can only be manoeuvred slowly, all trends must be interpreted in a forward-looking manner. If official statistics are to be sustained in their current position in five years’ time, then the necessary strategy must be established now. A simple continuation of the previous way of doing things, but including some ‘softer’ changes, is therefore not an option, even if this smooth manner of adaptation has been successful in the past. This chapter addresses the two megatrends of digitisation and globalisation. Obviously, it is not the purpose of this work to deal with their methodological, conceptual or technical aspects in this regard. Rather, it is about the consequences in terms of the statistical policy due to the changed statistical environment and conditions.

Dont have a licence yet? Then find out more about our products and how to get one now:

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik"

Online-Abonnement

Mit Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" erhalten Sie Zugriff auf:

  • über 102.000 Bücher
  • über 537 Zeitschriften

aus folgenden Fachgebieten:

  • Automobil + Motoren
  • Bauwesen + Immobilien
  • Business IT + Informatik
  • Elektrotechnik + Elektronik
  • Energie + Nachhaltigkeit
  • Finance + Banking
  • Management + Führung
  • Marketing + Vertrieb
  • Maschinenbau + Werkstoffe
  • Versicherung + Risiko

Jetzt Wissensvorsprung sichern!

inform now

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

Online-Abonnement

Mit Springer Professional "Wirtschaft" erhalten Sie Zugriff auf:

  • über 67.000 Bücher
  • über 340 Zeitschriften

aus folgenden Fachgebieten:

  • Bauwesen + Immobilien
  • Business IT + Informatik
  • Finance + Banking
  • Management + Führung
  • Marketing + Vertrieb
  • Versicherung + Risiko




Jetzt Wissensvorsprung sichern!

inform now
previous chapter Science and Society: A Reflexive Approach to Official Statistics
next chapter A Confident Look into the Future of Official Statistics
Footnotes
1
See, for example, the data revolution group, established by the UN (http://​www.​undatarevolution​.​org/​).
 
2
See the report ‘For a meaningful artificial intelligence—Towards a French and European Strategy’ (Villani 2018).
 
3
See Chap. 2.
 
4
See, for example, Haklay “Citizen Science and Policy: A European Perspective” (Haklay 2015).
 
5
See ECSA (2016).
 
6
See Soma et al. (2016a).
 
7
See Chap. 3.
 
8
The principles were presented in the Conference of European Statistical Stakeholders CESS 2016 in Budapest (Radermacher and Baldacci 2016).
 
9
See the “Bucharest Memorandum” (European Statistical System Committee 2018) and in particular the paper on a reference architecture for smart statistics (Ricciato et al. 2018).
 
10
See ESRG (2016), Stapel-Weber and Verrinder (2016).
 
11
See, for example, the Guide to Measuring Global Production (https://​www.​unece.​org/​index.​php?​id=​42106).
 
12
See Moulton and Ven (2018).
 
13
See Stapel-Weber et al. (2018).
 
22
‘However, till very recently, very few studies have questioned the figures they used, as if these figures were simply measuring a pre-existing reality. To prevent this “realist epistemology”, Alain Desrosières, who is the founder of a new way of thinking about statistics, proposed to talk not about “measurement” but about “quantifying process”: “The use of the verb ‘to measure’ is misleading because it overshadows the conventions at the foundation of quantification. The verb ‘quantify’, in its transitive form (‘make into a number’, ‘put a figure on’, ‘numericize’), presupposes that a series of prior equivalence conventions has been developed and made explicit […]. Measurement, strictly understood, comes afterwards […]. From this viewpoint, quantification splits into two moments: convention and measurement.”’ (Eyraud 2018, p. 103).
 
23
See for example, Roser (2018): ‘Most of us are wrong about how the world has changed (especially those who are pessimistic about the future)’.
 
24
Hans Rosling was a physician and statistician who, with his passion and his gift for explanation, managed to portray statistics completely new ways and use completely new dimensions of communication; he died in February 2017 (https://​www.​theguardian.​com/​global-development/​2017/​feb/​07/​hans-rosling-obituary and https://​www.​gapminder.​org/​).
 
25
See Haklay (2015): Citizen Science and Policy: A European Perspective (Haklay 2015).
 
26
See, for example, Chris Arnade’s blog ‘Why Trump voters are not “complete idiots”’ (Arnade 2016).
 
29
Brachinger, Der Euro als Teuro? Die wahrgenommene Inflation in Deutschland (Brachinger 2005).
 
30
1. Principle of citizen science Citizen science projects actively involve citizens in scientific endeavour that generates new knowledge or understanding. https://​ecsa.​citizen-science.​net/​sites/​default/​files/​ecsa_​ten_​principles_​of_​citizen_​science.​pdf.
 
33
Joost and Unteidig (2015), Gericke et al. (2018), Hisschemöller and Cuppen (2015).
 
34
Lehtonen, The multiple roles of sustainability indicators in informational governance: Between intended use and unanticipated influence (Lehtonen et al. 2016).
 
35
For example Jasanoff (2003).
 
36
See also J. Gray ‘Quand les mondes de données sont redistribués: Open Data, infrastructures de données et démocratie’ (Gray 2017).
 
37
For a more detailed introduction of governance, see Chap. 3.
 
38
See Soma et al. (2016b, p. 132).
 
39
A critical reflection on governance can be found in: Brown (2015, p. 122).
 
40
See Seltzer (1994).
 
41
See the “Manual on Government Deficit and Debt” (Eurostat 2016).
 
45
Synopsis report of the public consultation on the revision of the Directive on the reuse of public sector information https://​ec.​europa.​eu/​digital-single-market/​en/​news/​synopsis-report-public-consultation-revision-directive-reuse-public-sector-information.
 
46
See the report ‘Joining up Data for Better Statistics’ by the UK Statistics Authority (Office for Statistics Regulation 2018).
 
47
See the SIMSTAT approach in the revised regulation for EU business statistics (Eurostat 2015b).
 
48
‘The concept of informational governance has emerged to capture these new challenges of environmental governance in the context of the Information Age. The logic of informational governance stems from the observation that information is not only a source for environmental governance arrangements, but also that it contributes to transformation of environmental governance institutions. Such societal transformation refers to how the raise of information technology, flows and networks leads to a fundamental restructuring of governance processes, structures, practices and power relations’ (Soma et al. 2016b, p. 131).
 
49
Wigglesworth, Can Big Data revolutionise policymaking by governments? (Wigglesworth 2018); Heubl, Night light images paint accurate picture of China GDP (Heubl 2018).
 
50
See in particular William Seltzer’s paper ‘Politics and Statistics: Independence, Dependence, or Interaction?” (Seltzer 1994).
 
51
See for example the Quality Framework of European Statistics here https://​ec.​europa.​eu/​eurostat/​web/​quality/​european-statistics-code-of-practice.
 
52
See, for example, the European Statistical Trainings Programme (ESTP) here https://​ec.​europa.​eu/​eurostat/​cros/​content/​european-statistical-tranings-programme-estp_​en.
 
Literature
Bartl, Walter, Christian Papilloud, and Audrey Terracher-Lipinsky. 2019. Governing by Numbers—Key Indicators and the Politics of Expectations. Historical Social Reasearch 44: 1–339.
Bean, Charles. 2016. Independent Review of UK Economic Statistics, London, UK Government.
Beck, Ulrich. 1998. Risk Society Towards a New Modernity. London: Sage.
Benessia, A., S. Funtowicz, M. Giampietro, A. Guimaraes Pereira, J. Ravetz, A. Saltelli, R. Strand, and J.P. van der Sluijs. 2016. The Rightful Place of Science: Science on the Verge. Tempe, AZ: Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes.
Brachinger, H.W. 2005. Der Euro als Teuro? Die wahrgenommene Inflation in Deutschland. Wirtschaft und Statistik.
Brown, W. 2015. Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Cao, Longbing. 2017a. Data Science: A Comprehensive Overview. ACM Computing Surveys 50: 1–42.CrossRef
Cao, Longbing. 2017b. Data Science: Challenges and Directions. Communications of the ACM 80: 59–68.CrossRef
Dasgupta, Rana. 2018. The Demise of the Nation State. The Guardian, April 5, 2018.
Davies, William. 2016. The Limits of Neoliberalism—Authority, Sovereignty and the Logic of Competition. London: SAGE Publications.
Davies, William. 2017. How Statistics Lost Their Power—and Why We Should Fear What Comes Next. The Guardian.
De Clerck, J-P 2017. What is the Internet of Things? Internet of Things Definitions and Segments. In i-SCOOP.
Desrosières, Alain. 1998. The Politics of Large Numbers—A History of Statistical Reasoning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.MATH
Diakopoulos, Nicholas. 2015. Accountability in Algorithmic Decision-making. Communications of the ACM 59: 56–62.CrossRef
Diaz-Bone, Rainer, and Emmanuel Didier (ed.). 2016. Conventions and Quantification—Transdisciplinary Perspectives on Statistics and Classifications.
ECSA. 2016. ECSA Policy Paper #3 Citizen Science as part of EU Policy Delivery—EU Directives, 4. Berlin: ECSA.
ESGAB. 2010. Second Annual Report to the European Parliament and the Council on the Implementation of the European Statistics Code of Practice by Eurostat and the European Statistical System as a Whole. European Statistical Governance Advisory Board.
ESGAB. 2016. ESGAB Annual Report 2016. Luxembourg: European System Governance Advisory Board.
ESRG. 2016. Report of the Economic Statistics Review Group (ESRG). Dublin: CSO Ireland.
European Commission. 2012. Reinforcing Eurostat, Reinforcing High Quality Statistics, ed. European Commission. Brussels: European Commission.
European Statistical System Committee. 2018. Bucharest Memorandum on Official Statistics in a Datafied Society (Trusted Smart Statistics). In DGINS 2018, ed. Eurostat. Bucharest: Statistics Romania.
European Strategy and Policy Analysis System. 2019. Global Trends to 20130—Challenges and Choices for Europe, 42. Brussels: European Strategy and Policy Analysis System ESPAS.
European Union. 2011. European Statistical Programme 2013–2017. In COM(2011) 928 Final, ed. The European Parliament and the Council. Brussels: European Commission.
European Union. 2012. The Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU), ed. European Commission. Brussels: Official Journal of the European Union C326/193.
European Union. 2015. Regulation (EC) No 223/2009 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 March 2009 on European statistics and repealing Regulation (EC, Euratom) No 1101/2008 of the European Parliament and of the Council on the transmission of data subject to statistical confidentiality to the Statistical Office of the European Communities, Council Regulation (EC) No 322/97 on Community Statistics, and Council Decision 89/382/EEC, Euratom establishing a Committee on the Statistical Programmes of the European Communities. In 2009R0223—EN—08.06.2015—001.001—1, ed. European Union. Luxembourg: © European Union, https://​eur-lex.​europa.​eu, 1998–2019.
Eurostat. 2011. European Statistics Code of Practice for the National and Community Statistical Authorities—Adopted by the European Statistical System Committee 28th September 2011, ed. Eurostat. Luxembourg: Eurostat.
Eurostat. 2013b. European System of Accounts ESA 2010. Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union.
Eurostat. 2015a. Practical Arrangements Governing Working Relations Between Commissioner Thyssen, Her Cabinet and Eurostat. Luxembourg: Eurostat.
Eurostat. 2016. Manual on Government Deficit and Debt—Implementation of ESA 2010. Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union.
Eyraud, Corine. 2018. Stakeholder Involvement in the Statistical Value Chain: Bridging the Gap Between Citizens and Official Statistics. In Power from Statistics: Data, Information and Knowledge—Outlook Report—2018 Edition, ed. Eurostat. Luxembourg: Publication Office of the European Union.
Foucault, Michel. 1991. ‘Governmentality.’ in Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon and Peter Miller (eds.), The Foucault Effect (Chicago University Press: Chicago).
Fritz, Steffen, Linda See, Tyler Carlson, Mordechai Muki Haklay, et al. 2019. Citizen science and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Nature Sustainability 2: 922–930.CrossRef
Georgiou, Andreas V. 2018. A New Statistical System for the European Union. Brussels: Bruegel.
Gericke, Kilian, Boris Eisenbart, and Gregor Waltersdorfer. 2018. Staging Design Thinking for Sustainability in Practice: Guidance and Watch-Outs. In Sustainability Science, ed. Ariane König. New York: Routledge.
GfdS. 2016. GfdS wählt » postfaktisch « zum Wort des Jahres 2016, ed. Gesellschaft für Deutsche Sprache. Wiesbaden.
Global Commission on the Future of Work. 2019. Work for a Brighter Future, ed. International Labour Organization ILO, 71. Geneva: International Labour Organization ILO.
Gray, Jonathan. 2017. Quand les mondes de données sont redistribués: Open Data, infrastructures de données et démocratie. Statistique et Société 5: 29–34.
Haklay, Muki. 2015. Citizen Science and Policy: A European Perspective. In Case Study Series, 61. Washington, DC: Wilson Center COMMONS LAB.
Hale, Thomas, David Held, and Kevin Young. 2013. Gridlock: Why Global Cooperation is Failing When We Need It Mos. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Hand, D.J. 2004. Measurement Theory and Practice: The World Through Quantification. London: Arnold.MATH
Hendricks, Vincent F., and Mads Vestergaard. 2018. Postfaktisch—Die neue Wirklichkeit in Zeiten von Bullshit, Fake News und Verschwöruungstherien. München: Karl Blessing Verlag.
Heubl, Ben. 2018. Night Light Images Paint Accurate Picture of China GDP. NIKKEI ASIAN REVIEW, 24 March 2018.
Hisschemöller, Matthijs, and Eefje Cuppen. 2015. Participatory Assessment: Tools for Empowering, Learning and Legitimating? In The Tools of Policy Formulation, ed. Andrew J. Jordan and John R. Turnpenny. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing Limited.
HLEG. 2018. “A multi-dimensional approach to disinformation - Final report of the High Level Expert Group on Fake News and Online Disinformation.” In, 39. Luxembourg: European Commission.
HMTreasury. 1998. Statistics: A Matter of Trust. London: HM Treasury.
Independent Commission for Sustainable Equality. 2018. Sustainable Equality—Well-Being for Everyone in a Sustainable Europe, ed. Marcel Mersch, 193. Brussels: Group of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists & Democrats in the European Parliament.
Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. 2019. Summary for Policymakers of the Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, 39. Bonn, Germany: Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).
ISI. 2010. ISI Declaration on Professional Ethics. Hague: International Statistical Institute.
Jasanoff, Sheila. 2003. Technologies of Humility: Citizen Participation in Governing Science. Minerva 41: 223–244.CrossRef
Jasanoff, Sheila. 2004. States of Knowledge: The Co-production of Science and the Social Order. London: Routledge.CrossRef
Jasanoff, S., and Society for Social Studies of Science. 1995. Handbook of science and Technology Studies. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.
Joost, Gesche, and Andreas Unteidig. 2015. Design and Social Change: The Changing Environment of a Discipline in Flux. In Transformation Design, ed. Wolfgang Jonas, Sarah Zerwas, and Kristof von Anshelm. Birkhäuser: Basel.
König, Ariane (ed.). 2018. Sustainability Science. New York: Routledge.
Latour, B., S. Woolgar, and J. Salk. 1986. Laboratory Life: The Construction of Scientific Facts. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Lehtonen, Markku. 2015. Indicators: Tools for Informing, Monitoring or Controlling? In The Tools of Policy Formulation—Actors, Capacities, Venues and Effects, ed. Andrew J. Jordan and John R. Turnpenny. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing.
Lehtonen, Markku, Léa Sébastien, and Tom Bauler. 2016. The Multiple Roles of Sustainability Indicators in Informational Governance: Between Intended Use and Unanticipated Influence. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 2016: 1–9.CrossRef
Lohr, Steve. 2016. Civility in the Age of Artificial Intelligence. In ODBMS.org. Zicari, Roberto.
Mance, Henry. 2016. Britain has had Enough of Experts, Says Gove. Financial Times.
Martín-Guzman, Pilar. 2018. Old and New Risks for the Credibility of Official Statistics: Comments from a User. In Conference of European Statistical Stakeholders, ed. University Bamberg. Bamberg, Germany: University Bamberg.
Moulton, Brent R., and Peter van de Ven. 2018. Addressing the Challenges of Globalization in National Accounts. In Conference on Research in Income and Wealth “The Challenges of Globalization in the Measurement of National Accounts”. Washington.
Office for Statistics Regulation. 2018. Joining Up Data for Better Statistics. In Systemic Review Programme, ed. UK Statistics Authority, 39. London: UK Statistics Authority.
Peruzzi, Alberto. 2017. Complexity: Between Rhetoric and Science. In Complexity in Society: From Indicators Construction to their Synthesis, ed. F. Maggino. Cham: Springer International Publishing.
Pope Francis. 2014. Address to European Parliament, Strasbourg, France, November 25, 2014.
Radermacher, Walter. 2016. Quality Declaration of the European Statistical System—Inauguration. In CESS 2016. Budapest.
Radermacher, Walter J., and Emanuele Baldacci. 2016. Official Statistics for Democratic Societies—Dinner Speech at the CESS 2016, Budapest. In Conference of European Statistical Stakeholders. Budapest.
Randers, Jorgen, Johan Rockström, Per Espen Stoknes, Ulrich Golücke, David Collste, and Sarah Cornell. 2018. Transformation is Feasible—How to Achieve the Sustainable Development Goals Within Planetary Boundaries—A Report to the Club of Rome, for its 50 years Anniversary 17 October 2018. Stockholm: Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University, Norwegian Business School, Global Challenges Foundation.
Ricciato, Fabio, Michail Skaliotis, Albrecht Wirthmann, Kostas Giannakouris, and Fernando Reis. 2018. Towards a Reference Architecture for Trusted Smart Statistics. In DGINS 2018. Bucharest: Statistics Romania.
Roser, Max. 2018. Most of Us are Wrong About How the World has Changed (Especially Those Who are Pessimistic About the Future). In Our World In Data.
Ryan, Liz. 2014. ‘If You Can’t Measure It, You Can’t Manage It’: Not True. In Forbes/Leadership. Forbes.
Sangolt, Linda. 2010a. A Century of Quantification and “Cold Calculation”. Trends in the Pursuit of Efficiency, Growth and Pre-eminence. In Between Elightenment and Disaster—Dimensions of the Political Use of Knowledge, ed. Linda Sangolt. Brussels: P.I.E. Peter Lang.CrossRef
Sangolt, Linda. 2010b. Between Enlightenment and Disaster: Dimensions of the Political Use of Knowledge. Brussels: P.I.E. Peter Lang.CrossRef
Seltzer, William. 1994. Politics and Statistics: Independence, Dependence, or Interaction?, ed. UN Dept. of Econ. and Soc. Information and Policy Analysis. New York: UN.
Soma, Katrine, Marleen C. Onwezen, Irini E. Salverda, and Rosalie I. van Dam. 2016a. Roles of citizens in environmental governance in the Information Age—four theoretical perspectives. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 2016: 122–130.CrossRef
Soma, Katrine, Bertrum H. MacDonald, Catrien J.A.M. Termeer, and Paul Opdam. 2016b. Introduction article: informational governance and environmental sustainability. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 2016: 131–139.CrossRef
Stapel-Weber, Silke, and John Verrinder. 2016. Globalisation at Work in Statistics—Questions Arising from the ‘Irish Case. Eurona—Eurostat Review on National Accounts and Macroeconomic Indicators, 29–44.
Stapel-Weber, Silke, Paul Konijn, John Verrinder, and Henk Nijmeijer. 2018. Meaningful Information for Domestic Economies in the Light of Globalization—Will Additional Macroeconomic Indicators and Different Presentations Shed Light? In Conference on Research in Income and Wealth “The Challenges of Globalization in the Measurement of National Accounts”. Washington.
Stapleford, Thomas A. 2015. Price Indexes, Political Judgments, and the Challenge of Democratic Control. In Ottawa Group—International Working Group on Price Indices—Fourteenth Meeting. Tokyo, Japan: Statistics Japan.
Stiglitz, Joseph E., Jean-Paul Fitoussi, and Martine Durand. 2018a. Beyond GDP—Measuring What Counts for Economic and Social Progress. Paris: OECD Publishing.CrossRef
Stiglitz, Joseph E., Jean-Paul Fitoussi, and Martine Durand (eds.). 2018b. For Good Measure, Advancing Research on Well-being, Metrics Beyond GDP. Paris: OECD Publishing.
Sturgeon, Timothy J. 2013. Global Value Chains and Economic Globalization—Towards a New Measurement Framework. Luxembourg: Eurostat.
United Nations. 2014. Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics. New York.
Villani, Cédric. 2018. For a Meaningful Artificial Intelligence—Towards a French and European Strategy. In Mission Assigned by the Prime Minister Édouard Philippe, 151. Paris: AI for Humanity—French Strategy for Artificial Intelligence.
Wigglesworth, Robin. 2018. Can Big Data Revolutionise Policymaking by Governments? Financial Times, 31 January 2018.
World Economic Forum. 2019. The Global Risks Report. In The Global Risks Report, ed. World Economic Forum WEF, 107. Geneva: World Economic Forum WEF.
Metadata
Title
Official Statistics 4.0: The Era of Digitisation and Globalisation
Author
Walter J. Radermacher
Copyright Year
2020
Book
Official Statistics 4.0

Print ISBN: 978-3-030-31491-0

Electronic ISBN: 978-3-030-31492-7

Copyright Year: 2020

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31492-7_4