1 The Code of Practice in Statistics Peter Bekx Director, Business Statistics IAOS Conference Shanghai, October 2008

2 Content of the presentation Some background on the European Code of Practice Independence and ethical issues in the Code Implementation of the Code What next

3 Background of the CoP Revision of Greek public finance data Need to strengthen trust in official statistics Need to improve governance EU standards on independence, integrity, accountability  adoption of CoP in 2005

4 Elements of the CoP Independence and ethical issues  Professional independence  Statistical confidentiality  Impartiality and objectivity Quality Professional independence  General quality commitment  Methodological requirements  Statistical procedures  Different quality dimensions: relevance, accuracy, timeliness, coherence, accessibility, clarity

5 Implementing the CoP Self-regulatory approach Self-assessments by NSIs Peer reviews  Standard set of indicators  Meetings with staff, users  Improvement actions  Best practices

6 Results on independence and ethical issues Independence in law Strong protection of confidentiality More diverse results on impartiality, objectivity

7 Next steps New round of peer reviews to check progress New legal framework Communication effort, e.g. via Quality label