Quality in official statistics using European Statistics Code of Practise as a framework

To build trust for the statistics in the society and for the national statistical institute (NSI) high quality of official statistics is a key issue. High quality of official statistics is therefore important. But how does the society know that the quality is good? And how can the NSI prove that the disseminated statistics have good quality? One way is to follow international guidelines and framework for quality measures and to publish quality indicators. One useful quality framework is European statistics Code of Practice, CoP. The European Code of Practice is based on 15 principles. Governance authorities and statistical authorities in the European Union commit themselves to adhere to the principles fixed in this code covering the institutional environment, statistical processes and outputs. A set of indicators of good practice for each of the 15 principles provides a reference for reviewing the implementation of the Code. It takes time to implement the CoP and to measure all indicators but the CoP may work as guide and some indicators can be chosen as a start.