Certification Production of statistics ISO 20252 Statistics Sweden WG-Quality meeting 2016-12-06 Heather Bergdahl

Background – Certification ISO 20252 ISO 20252 Market, opinion and social research Swedish government – follow-up of quality, matter of trust Bidding for tenders – quality statement on adherence to common business standard Standardisation work on methods and tools Stat Sweden’s quality managment system - a minimum level of quality ES Code of Practice (ES CoP) – means of implementing

Correspondence – ES Code of Practice Source: Quality Assurance Framework of the European Statistical System

ISO 20252 - requirements Client focus General order in planning and documentation Transparency and traceability Checklists Validation of results Testing of questionaires

A six year process Training of staff Setting up network of quality coaches Screening of 200 statistical products Supplementing Process Support System Setting up organisation of internal quality auditors Establishing a Quality Manual Completing 5 major development projects

Major Projects – development and implementation Disclosure control – methods and tools Validation of coding process – common tool and working routines System for Telephone Interview Monitoring Estimation of Variance where lacking Pretesting of questionaires – clear strategy and structure

Initial experiences and lessons learned Useful with an existing standard to lean on Importance of top management focus aided by the Swedish government Could have been better to have standardisation in place beforehand Easy to be too optimistic about the timeline

Later on… Advantages / benefits Possible disadvantages /impairments Certain obvious deficiencies addressed Higher degree of general order in production Increased awareness of need for quality assurance Quality audits are very useful in promoting the standard Possible disadvantages /impairments physical action only attitude of the mind The letter of the law versus the spirit of the law e.g. validation, understanding issues for product quality Certification and follow-up revisions have been relatively lenient so far Prevalency of the standard in Sweden, among government authorities, and availabity of sufficient expertise to certify

TAck! Contact: heather.bergdahl@scb.se