Time to legislate statistics says South Africa's Statistician-General at SDMX conference
Vue
Download
Date
2017-10Author(s)/Corporate Author (s)
United Nations. Economic Commission for Africa.;Metadata
Afficher la notice complèteRésumé
Statistics make a crucial contribution to good governance in modern democracy, assisting in the formulation and evaluation of policies, among others, hence safeguards should be put in place to protect statisticians, South Africa’s StatisticianGeneral, Pali Lehohla, said Monday. In a keynote address to the 6th Statistical Data and Metadata exchange (SDMX) conference in Addis Ababa, Mr. Lehohla said statistics are part of the accountability framework and a late comer in joining the judiciary, legislature and auditors general, amongst others, so “safeguards that protect statisticians in similar fashion as the judiciary are crucial conditions for performing the tasks of statistics”. Mr. Lehohla said the advent of the Sustainable Development Goals have imposed on statisticians the inevitable need to advance the global agenda even further following the expiry of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). He said the responsibilities were enormous. He said the essence of the SMDX, an international initiative that aims to standardize and modernize mechanisms and processes for the exchange of statistical data and metadata among international organisations and their member countries, and its significant contribution to the statistical value chain need not be overemphasized. SDMX is also a rigorous standard, which makes it possible to impose strict requirements on the data in terms of quality and consistency. Implementation of SDMX has in many organisations and countries often spurred a cleanup exercise, which dramatically improved the quality and usability of disseminated data.