PROJECT C3.1_21 VIRTUAL GROUP ON THE COORDINATION OF NATIONAL STATISTICAL SYSTEM

The concept of virtual groups is the Contractor’s response to the requirement in the ToR for STEP of “Modern technologies should be actively implemented to share knowledge and communicate with stakeholders”. Eurostat and Contractor have agreed on the establishment of virtual groups as a way to reach this. The concept of virtual groups is described in detail in a note for the third NC meeting.

The virtual group on coordination of the national statistical system was the first virtual group. The creation was accelerated by the COVID-19 lock-down that meant that no physical activities could take place. The virtual group is one activity among others within project C3.1 aiming at improving the coordination of the NSS as well as introducing the European Statistics Code of Practice (ESCoP) in other producers of official statistics (OPOS). The other activities are a workshop, a study visit and a set of TA missions. The partner countries will use examples of best practices from EU member states (MSs) and the United Kingdom (UK) and presentations to draft their own road maps to better coordination of the NSS.

The first round of online presentations was carried out in June 2020 with some more planned for July 2020. Each session was attended by numerous representatives from the national statistical institutes as well OPOS. Especially, the participation of OPOS was important given the subject. Each session sparked many questions and discussions among the participants from both the partner countries as well as the EU member states and the UK. In particular, the role of the law on official statistics was in the centre of the discussions as well as the position of the central banks in the national statistical systems.