The transformation of IAOS 1985–2015: Learning from the past

2.1SCORUS

The International Association for Regional and Urban Statistics (IARUS) was dissolved at the WSC Paris 1989 and reconstituted as the Standing Committee for Regional and Urban Statistics, a committee of IAOS. This change was designed to avoid the overlaps between IAOS and IARUS and to intensify collaboration. The first SCORUS meeting was held in Duisburg, Germany, in June 1990, under the co-chairmanship of the IAOS President and the SCORUS Chairperson. SCORUS remains very active, 27 years later.

There have been discussions from time to time about whether IAOS should be an umbrella body with a range of standing committees or linkages – other possibilities being vital registration (with the International Institute for Vital Registration and Statistics, which was discussed in 1991/93); demography and population (with the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population); central bank statistics (with the Irving Fisher Committee). None of these discussions has borne fruit.

2.2The Malaguerra report 1999 [1]

At the General Assembly at WSC 1997 in Istanbul, some members expressed concern at the very broad role of the association, as well as the risk of duplication with other international organisations. The IAOS had expanded successfully, with 524 individual members from 70 countries and 35 institutional members. However membership was unbalanced, with 53% from Europe, and 83% male, and there were few young members.

The association had developed as an unofficial alternative to formal international organisations. However, since its founding the international political landscape had changed, and formal international organisations had been able to improve the co-ordination of programmes. Also it was noted that the statistical world had changed, with more emphasis on interdisciplinary co-operation, and there was a need for this to be reflected in IAOS’ work with other ISI associations. So, the question was posed: what then is the role for IAOS?

IAOS set up a Review Committee chaired by Dr Carlo Malaguerra to look at how the role of IAOS within ISI could be more clearly defined. The Committee met during 1998, and produced a preliminary report for discussion at the IAOS conference at Aguascalientes, Mexico in 1998. It consulted members through a questionnaire and finally reported to the Helsinki General Assembly in 1999.

The Malaguerra Report identified nine areas where the Association could develop further. These are set out in the Appendix. The Review had consulted the membership on some key questions, but it is clear that the responses were diverse in many areas, and with some strongly felt differing views. The review identified important issues and discussed them fully, but there was no clear consensus, and it was difficult for the IAOS to develop a clear way forward. Malaguerra was one of the most comprehensive reports on the activities, missions and tasks of IAOS. Many of the issues raised are still important and are covered in the ‘key challenges’ section later in this paper.

The environment of official statisticians was changing around the time of the discussion on this report and has been changing ever since. There are now more international statistical meetings and conferences where young as well as older statisticians can discuss and develop ideas, and the IAOS does not need to have the same pioneering and inspiring role of connecting people as it used to have. The discussion of the fundamental principles are on the agendas of the official meetings of the international organisations where the NSIs are represented. And this is of course what IAOS wanted.

The Malaguerra Report was discussed at the General Assembly in Helsinki in August 1999. The report and recommendations were welcomed and the Executive Committee was asked to take them into account in formulating new activities and programmes.

3.1The 1990s

3.2The 2000s

The issue of how far IAOS should become involved in politically contentious subjects is still a matter of debate. One consequence of the conference was the decision by OECD and the World Bank to start the Metagora project in 2004 – an international project focusing on methods, tools and frameworks for measuring human rights and democratic governance.

The briefing session was aimed at newly appointed Chief Statisticians during the first year of their term in office.

3.3The 2010s

4.1The IAOS web site

The idea of a web site had been raised in 1997, and IAOS web pages on the ISI web site were introduced in 1998, but the first web site was not launched until 2002. Originally hosted by Statistics Singapore, and then transferred to Statistics Finland, the practice was to have the web site hosted by the NSI associated with the President. In 2008 the web site transferred to a permanent home at the ISI permanent office. This made the web site more sustainable.

In 2013 IAOS began, in the spirit of transparency, to publish more information about itself on the web site: including minutes of Executive Committee meetings, its work programme, finances, and membership numbers.

In 2016 the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics redesigned the IAOS website, but it remains hosted in the ISI domain.

4.2Young Statisticians’ Prize

Part of the 2002 initiative to extend the membership to younger statisticians included an announcement of a Young Statisticians’ Prize. The idea was to encourage young statisticians to submit papers that could be presented at the WSC. The prize included payment for the costs of travel to the WSC.

Ida Stamhuis led the project, using her experience of other similar scientific competitions. The prize was launched in the autumn of 2004, with the first prize being presented at the WSC Sydney 2005. There were 22 submissions and the first winner was Mika Gissler from Finland. At that stage the Prize was biennial. Second and third prizes were added for 2007. The prize became annual in 2011 and was put on a sustainable basis by developing a rotating panel of assessors. In 2013 to celebrate the International Year of Statistics, all three prize winners were funded to present their papers at WSC 2013 Hong Kong. By 2017 the number of entries had grown to 45 from 23 countries.

4.3The Statistical Journal

From the beginning the IAOS participated in the Editorial Board of the International Statistical Review, as a section of the ISI. Also the Journal of Official Statistics had agreed to have an ‘IAOS Corner’ in each issue, to be used for some short articles together with information on activities. But an early survey of members supported the idea of the association having its own journal. There was much discussion of this. In 1991 the newsletter reported that there was a general reluctance to embark upon a new publication before existing newsletters and journals had been explored.

From the beginning the main method of communication with members was through the section in the ISI newsletter, which appeared three times a year. This gave reports of past and upcoming conferences, the contents of relevant journals, and in the mid-1990s began to give fairly full accounts of Executive Committee meetings. The first IAOS Occasional Newsletter appeared in 1990 and was circulated every two years in non IAOS conference years.

IAOS’ own quarterly journal, the Statistical Journal of the IAOS, was finally established in 2007. Essentially the association took over the Statistical Journal of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, so the first issue is volume 24! This first issue was devoted to a series of papers on the evolution of official statistics across the globe over the previous 60 years.

IOS Press, based in the Netherlands, was commissioned to publish the Journal. The arrangement was reviewed in 2015. The new contract has improved provisions in comparison with the previous one, such as the publisher’s responsibility to provide a quarterly usage report to the Editor-in-Chief and to allow open electronic access for one article in each issue and one issue in each year.

The main aim of the Journal is to support the IAOS mission by publishing articles to promote the understanding and advancement of official statistics and to foster the development of effective and efficient official statistical services on a global basis. Papers are expected to be of wide interest to readers. All papers are refereed.

Broadly based papers of wide interest to users and producers of official statistics are welcomed. This includes:

The Journal is available free to members online, with printed copies at a reduced rate. There have been a number of special topic editions or special sections, some with guest editors. See Table 3 the Journal regularly publishes papers by the Young Statistician Prize winners.

The Journal has an Editor-in-Chief who is responsible for ensuring that the Journal focuses on current and emerging issues and challenges related to the management and operations of official statistics and related public policy matters. The Editor-in-Chief is supported by an Editorial Board. Siu-Ming Tam was the first Editor-in-Chief, and served until the end of 2010. Frank Nolan took over the editorship and served until his untimely death in the autumn of 2012. Issue 3, 4 Vol 28 2012 was dedicated to Frank.

Fritz Scheuren took over the editorship from the first issue of 2013 up until 2016. Up until then although nominally a quarterly journal, a shortage of good papers had required the journal to be published twice a year, each edition being in fact two issues together. Fritz’ success in commissioning papers meant that the journal could publish on its planned quarterly schedule. A popular initiative he introduced was a series of interviews with statistical leaders around the world. Articles on indigenous issues for statistics became a regular feature. Fritz also made one paper in each issue free to everyone on-line, and then one issue each year when all articles were free. He also began the practice of publishing the IAOS President’s report to the General Assembly. Fritz drew heavily on IAOS sessions at WSCs, and on IAOS conferences where he was a regular attender, buttonholing authors after their presentations to persuade them to publish. Fritz expanded the Editorial Board and built a team to support him for this enhanced activity.

The number of papers published in each of the last few years has grown and reached a record 84 in 2016.

By 2014 the Journal was able to show increased readership and was looking for an independent ranking measure. Co-operation with the Journal of Official Statistics has continued.

Kirsten West took on the mantle of the journal in 2016 and is the current Editor-in-Chief. During the last two years, the SJIAOS has begun to publish discussion of some of its articles, and to offer training on article writing at WSC and IAOS conferences

5.1Role within the ISI

The IAOS is an important association of the ISI which reflects a particular usage of statistics rather than a statistical discipline. You would expect the links with the other associations to be stronger than they are. The ISI family offers opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration and stronger academic links. The Malaguerra report recommended more joint meetings with other associations. It also suggested exploratory talks on a merger with the International Association of Survey Statisticians (IASS), and incorporating Irving Fisher as a committee within IAOS. Neither of these have been pursued, though the practice of joint meetings has continued, most recently with the International Association for Statistical Education (IASE).

5.2The importance of users in the membership

Despite continued declarations that the IAOS is an association for official statistics and not an association of official statisticians, it has proved a more attractive society for producers of statistics and now has fewer users in its membership. Part of the difficulty is that producer/user relationships are managed at national level, and there are no international equivalents (apart from in the EU) of national statistics councils. The IAOS 2012 Ukraine conference focused on users with its theme of ‘Getting your messages across’, but there is a need to ensure that emphasis continues to be given to interactions with users in sessions at IAOS conferences.

5.3Supporting statisticians in the developing world

IAOS needs to serve its membership across the world, in more- and less-developed countries, where needs may be different. But IAOS recognises the roles of inter-governmental organisations and cannot compensate for weaknesses in formal statistical co-operation. IAOS needs to encourage more participation from less-developed countries in its activities, and consider how professional links can be encouraged internationally.

There has been more participation from the developing world in IAOS conferences in recent years, both in attendance (made possible partly by funding from the Trust Fund for Statistical Capacity Building, managed by the World Bank), and in programming (the IAOS 2004 Amman, Jordan conference was specifically on Poverty, Social Exclusion and Development). The IAOS 2010 conference was held in Chile, and led to an upturn in Latin American membership.

5.4Professional ethics

The ISI adopted a Declaration on Professional Ethics in the year that IAOS was founded. After a lot of preparatory work, the ISI revised the declaration in 2010, and established an Advisory Board on Ethics in 2011. Issues around professional ethics and official statistics have always been dominant in the issues considered by the Board, though often the concerns are about government interference in official statistics, and failure to conform to the UN Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics, rather than the ethical behaviour of official statisticians. However, there have been cases where government actions have put pressure on statisticians not to abide by the ISI Declaration. Recent cases have been in Argentina, Canada and Greece.

The IAOS had ethical questions on its agenda from the beginning, and since then, ethical issues have continued to rank highly on the IAOS agenda. The IAOS has held sessions promoting good practice. As a part of a new programme, the IAOS Executive Committee organised regional workshops on governance and sustainability of modern statistical systems to exchange information about good practices. These were held in conjunction with IAOS conferences in Chile 2010 and Ukraine 2012.

Discussions on ethics have been regularly held at IAOS and WSC meetings, including ‘Professional ethics – a panel discussion’ at WSC Rio 2015, ‘Supporting statisticians in developing countries’ at IAOS 2016 Abu Dhabi, and ‘Ethics and Big Data’ at WSC 2017 in Marrakech.

5.5The age profile of the membership

There is a risk that the Association is dominated by senior government statisticians, who have many other opportunities for international engagement, and that younger voices are not heard. IAOS is non-hierarchical and everyone has an equal voice. The Young Statisticians’ Prize has been set up to encourage participation from younger members, and although IAOS does not report the age of its members, there is a sense of younger members making an impact at recent conferences.