Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics

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Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics are the basic principles to be followed by the statistical producers and their employees, as well as the employees of consigned agencies (these parties are defined in the Article 3 Item 3 of the Statistics Act), in the course of production and dissemination of official statistics.

Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics are organized into a preamble and 8 basic principles each consisting of two to five implementation guidelines. They aim to define the concept of official statistics and responsibilities of official data producers and to provide the basic principles to be followed.

Fundamental Principles: Values to be shared in the process of producing and disseminating official statistics

• Ensure impartiality
• Enhance reliability
• Improve efficiency
• Ensure comparability
• Protect confidentiality
• Strengthen infrastructure
• Engage users
• Improve service

• Implementation guidelines: Specific activities to be carried out by the data producers and their employees in order to abide by the fundamental principles

Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics

Subject to the Statistics Act, official statistics are public assets providing essential information in assessing socioeconomic changes and supporting scientific policy making. Statistical producers, as agencies that produce official statistics, must strive to earn trust from the general public and provide satisfactory service to their data users.

In this context, to ensure autonomy and strengthen accountability among official data producers and their employees, the following Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics are provided.

Official statistics are public assets carrying values that benefit the public, and their impartiality must be guaranteed.

Official statistics must be produced through objective and scientific methods to ensure their accuracy and reliability.

Cost, response and survey burden must be considered into the plan for production of official statistics to ensure surveys are conducted in an efficient manner.

Official statistics must be follow harmonized concept, classification and methodologies to ensure comparability with other statistics.

Data carrying confidential information on individuals, corporations or groups must be used for statistical purpose only and shall be strictly protected.

Official statistics must be produced with sufficient supply of manpower, budget, and computing hardware and software.

Efforts must be made to engage data users in order to enhance utility of official statistics and maximize their public value.

Official statistics must be made available to all users with convenient access for use.