Is globalisation a threat to official statistics Enrico Giovannini Chief Statistician OECD

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Is globalisation a threat to
official statistics? Enrico GiovanniniChief
Statistician - OECD
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• What is globalisation?
• OECD Handbook on Economic Globalisation
  Indicators
• A dynamic and multidimensional process of
  economic integration whereby national resources
  become more and more internationally mobile while
  national economies become increasingly
  interdependent
• In a globalising economy, distances and
  national boundaries have substantially diminished
  as most of the obstacles to market access have
  been removed.
• Despite the fact that economic integration is a
  dominant feature of globalisation, other
  dimensions are also of significance, including
  the social, cultural, political and institutional
  realms.

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• The value added of statistics
• A formula
• VAS N (QSA MF) RS TS NL
• VAS value added of official statistics
• N size of the audience
• QSA statistical information produced
• MF role of media
• RS relevance of the statistical information
• TS trust in official statistics
• NL users numeracy

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• The value added of statistics were does it come
  from?
• If we look at the statistical standards developed
  to measure economic activities, we find that
• according to the International Standard Industry
  Classification (ISIC Rev.1), the production of
  official statistics is a non-market service
• according to the 1993 System of National
  Accounts, services are the result of a production
  activity that changes the conditions of the
  consuming units
• according to Atkinson (2005), the output of the
  government sector should in principle be measured
  in a way that is adjusted for quality, taking
  into account of the attributable incremental
  contribution of the service to the outcome.
• What should the final outcome of official
  statistics be, considering what the SNA says?
  Knowledge

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• The value added of official statistics
• A formula
• VAS N (QSA MF) RS TS NL
• VAS value added of official statistics
• N size of the audience
• QSA statistical information produced
• MF role of media
• RS relevance of the statistical information
• TS trust in official statistics
• NL users numeracy

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• What is the impact of globalisation?
• N size of the audience (1)
• For several years the main mandate of NSOs was to
  serve a small, but very influential, audience
  (the government, academic experts, etc.) and
  then, only as by-product, the rest of the
  society.
• Fortunately, this vision has been gradually
  replaced by a wider view of the core business of
  the statistical function, i.e. to foster, across
  the whole society, a better knowledge of
  economic, social and environmental phenomena.
• This means that NSOs should try to maximise the
  audience as core function.

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• What is the impact of globalisation?
• N size of the audience (2)
• Globalisation means that the potential audience
  for statistics is enlarged well beyond national
  boundaries.
• More and more people/companies are interested in
  comparing economic and social performances
  between countries when making their decisions.
• International benchmarking has become a must.
• Opportunities
• Serve a global audience
• Make products accessible to and accessed by a
  global audience
• Multi-language web sites/databases
• More use of international data

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• What is the impact of globalisation?
• MF role of media (1)
• sources of information on statistics TV (78),
  newspapers (58), Internet (37), radio (34),
  family/working networks (34) and magazines
  (14)
• the five main TV networks report data on the
  unemployment rate in 83, GDP growth in 46 and
  inflation rate in 35 of cases.
• the 27 most popular newspapers covered 39 of the
  reports on GDP, 53 of those concerning CPI and
  52 of those announcing the official unemployment
  rate
• Associated Press and United Press International
  typically do not mention specific source
  agencies.

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• What is the impact of globalisation?
• MF role of media (2)
• 23 of Americans have never heard of official
  unemployment data or the source agency the
  comparable figures are 34 for CPI and 40 for
  GDP.
• There was a tendency for newspapers to more
  frequently report the latest official figures
  when it represented an unfavourable development,
  which may reflect the greater importance people
  place on the information content of bad news
  (Curtin, 2007)

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• What is the impact of globalisation?
• T trust in official statistics (1)

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• What is the impact of globalisation?
• T trust in official statistics (2)

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• A revolution web 2.0 the participative web
• User-Created Content (UCC) is a phenomenon with
  major social implications. Changes the way in
  which users produces, distribute, access and
  re-use information.
• As an open platform, UCC increases the free flow
  of information and freedom of expression, as well
  as enriching political and societal debates and
  broadening diversity of opinion.
• According to Time, in 2006 the www became a tool
  for bringing together the small contributions of
  millions of people and making them matter. This
  phenomenon has also been broadly referred to as
  web 2.0 and the participative web.

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• How is information disseminated?
• As Einstein said, information is not knowledge
  knowledge is a complex and dynamic process
  involving cognitive mechanisms and the persons
  interest plays a key role in activating the
  cognitive mechanism.
• The epidemiologic approach states that
  information is spread like a virus in a society.
• Therefore, data providers need to reach as many
  people as possible at the beginning of the chain,
  to vaccinate them against the ignorance
  disease.
• To do that, they have to
• disseminate information relevant to people
• present it in a way that people can relate it to
  their own interests
• use language/tools coherent with those used by
  people in other contexts.

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• The web 2.0 revolution
• and official statistics
• Some evidence
• 95 of those who use Google do not go beyond the
  first page of occurrences
• once they reach a particular site, 95 of users
  do not click more than three times to find what
  they want
• the way in which discovery metadata are
  structured is fundamental to be placed in the
  first page of Googles results, but these
  metadata have nothing to do with the intrinsic
  quality of the information provided
• new approaches to discovery are based on peoples
  opinions.
• Web 2.0 tends to transform the consumer of a
  particular information/service provided via
  Internet into a prosumer

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• Opportunities and risks
• Reliable statistics cannot be generated using
  collective intelligence, but this approach can
  have a huge impact on the way in which statistics
  are perceived or used.
• New keywords Legitimacy, Trust, Authority,
  Credibility
• Great challenge, but also a key opportunity, for
  data providers to develop a new communication
  strategy to reach/convince communities about
  the quality of existing sources (UN principle 4
  The statistical agencies are entitled to comment
  on erroneous interpretation and misuse of
  statistics).
• If web 2.0 is marketplace for discussion, should
  statistical institutions create discussion sites
  about the quality of data used in the public
  domain, including that of their own data?
• Is there a risk to open a Pandoras box?

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• Recent experiences
• Web 2.0 sites have been launched (Swivel.com,
  ManyEyes.com), where people can upload, share,
  visualise, and comment on data
• Newsweek published an article entitled Power in
  numbers, explaining how Wiki software is
  reforming bloated bureaucracies and changing the
  face of communication
• Dynamic animations to present statistics in a
  more understandable way
• The Columbian NSO is producing short video clips
• LSE recently held a public lecture on Why
  thinking-by-numbers is the new way to be smart
  
• An art gallery in New York hosted an exhibition
  Running the numbers, a series of pictures
  looking at contemporary American culture through
  the austere lens of statistics.

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• A storm or a paradigm shift?
• Some people may argue that all these signals
  are part of a storm and not as indicators of a
  paradigm shift therefore there is no need for a
  radical (and quick) change in the way statistics
  are disseminated and communicated.
• According to several people, we are facing a real
  paradigm shift and radical changes are necessary
  to stay on the market
• The OECD believes that statistical data providers
  need to evolve from information providers to
  knowledge builders

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• OECD experiences and projects
• New Dissemination Policy from products to
  services
• Factbook data on web 2.0 platforms (Swivel.com
  and ManyEyes.com)
• 2008 Factbook with dynamic charts
• Dynamic Country Profiles
• Use of Trandalyzer (Gapminder) to produce video
  clips
• Wikigender

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• A must for the future of statistics
• This revolution comes from the advances in
  technology, rather than from a new statistical
  technique because of ICT changes, data are
  becoming a commodity and statistical analyses
  are no longer a kind of methodology whose results
  are accessible to a small audience, but a key
  process to produce knowledge for all people.
• In this context, communication is not an just
  appendix of the core business focused on data
  production, but a key function that can determine
  the success or the failure of an official data
  provider.
• Be open to the dialogue with users using the web
  2.0 approach is not a choice anymore it is a
  must, especially to ensure that new generations
  will look at official statistics as an
  authoritative source.