In his Blog Director Groves of the US Census Bureau informs about an important discussion among his colleagues (thanks Xavier for this hint):
‘Several weeks ago, at the initiative of Brian Pink, the Australian statistician, leaders of the government statistical agencies from Australia, Canada, New Zealand, United Kingdom, and the United States held a summit meeting to identify common challenges and share information about current initiatives. ..
… They perceive the same likely future challenges for central government statistical agencies, and they are making similar organizational changes to prepare for the future. …
Ingredients of the future vision:
- The volume of data generated outside the government statistical systems is increasing much faster than the volume of data collected by the statistical systems; almost all of these data are digitized in electronic files.
- As this occurs, the leaders expect that relative cost, timeliness, and effectiveness of traditional survey and census approaches of the agencies may become less attractive.
- Blending together multiple available data sources (administrative and other records) with traditional surveys and censuses (using paper, internet, telephone, face-to-face interviewing) to create high quality, timely statistics that tell a coherent story of economic, social and environmental progress must become a major focus of central government statistical agencies.
- This requires efficient record linkage capabilities, the building of master universe frames that act as core infrastructure to the blending of data sources, and the use of modern statistical modeling to combine data sources with highest accuracy.
- Agencies will need to develop the analytical and communication capabilities to distill insights from more integrated views of the world and impart a stronger systems view across government and private sector information.
- There are growing demands from researchers and policy-related organizations to analyze the micro-data collected by the agencies, to extract more information from the data.
… In short, the five countries are actively inventing a future unlike the past, requiring new ways of thinking and calling for new skills. The payoff sought is timelier, more trustworthy, and lower cost statistical information measuring new components of the society, economy, and environment, telling a richer story of our countries’ progress. ‘
Read the full blog post here: http://directorsblog.blogs.census.gov/2012/02/02/national-statistical-offices-independent-identical-simultaneous-actions-thousands-of-miles-apart/
Blog about Stats 