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Speed talk session 6

Coordination of the National Statistical System

4 June 2026
13:15 – 14:00
ŠIBENIK II SHOW ON MAP

Session chair
Maria João Zilhão
Member of the Management Board, Statistics Portugal (INE)

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Maria João Zilhão has been a member of the Management Board of Statistics Portugal (INE) since January 2018, having previously served as Director of the Planning, Control and Quality Unit at INE from 2007. She has a degree in economics, a master’s degree in statistics and information management, and she has completed a course in Organizational Leadership at Harvard Business School Online in 2025. She started working at INE as a statistician in economic and agriculture statistics in 1990. She has been involved in Quality Management at the ESS since 1999, coordinating the implementation of INE’s Quality Management System, which received ISO 9001 certification in 2024. She has been a member of several groups, having participated in the Leadership Group (LEG) on Quality and the Sponsorship on Quality, and has also been involved in the preparation of European quality tools such as the ESS QAF, the revision of the European Statistics Code of Practice, and the methodology for peer review exercises, chairing one of the teams of Peer Review Experts in the 3rd round. She has been a trainer in the field of quality in statistics at ESS level since 2001 and has extensive experience in international cooperation on systematic quality management and as an official representative in international organisations such as the United Nations. She chaired the Council Working Party on Statistics in 2021 during the Portuguese Presidency of the EU. She represents Statistics Portugal at the Portuguese National Statistics Council and has been President of the Standing Section on Statistics Coordination within the National Statistical System since 2018. She has been a member of the Programme Committee for several editions of the European Conference on Quality in Official Statistics and was part of the organising team and a host country representative for Q2024.

Presentation title
Embedding a Culture of Quality Across the Statistical Ecosystem: Abu Dhabi’s AI Process for Quality Assessment
PRESENTATION

This paper presents the institutionalized quality assessment workflow implemented by the Statistics Centre Abu Dhabi (SCAD) to embed a strong and sustainable culture of quality across the Abu Dhabi statistical ecosystem.

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Aligned with international frameworks such as the UN Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics, the IMF Data Quality Assessment Framework, and SCAD’s Statistical Code of Practice, the workflow integrates capacity building, structured governance, and transparent quality communication into a unified, publication-oriented process. This approach strengthens organizational accountability, supports professional excellence, and ensures consistency across statistical domains and producers.

The workflow begins with the Quality Report Writing Workshop, a foundational capacity-building activity organized for selected statistical products and Other Producers of Official Statistics (OPOS) in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi. Beyond introducing SCAD’s quality guidelines and standardized reporting templates, the workshop builds shared understanding, promotes a common quality vocabulary, and fosters cross-domain consistency and collaborative learning. Through this process, statistical producers are equipped to systematically document methodologies, assess risks, and articulate strengths and limitations across the five quality dimensions: Relevance, Accuracy, Timeliness and Punctuality, Clarity and Accessibility, and Comparability and Coherence. This structured reflection encourages methodological discipline and continuous improvement within production teams.

Following the workshop, producers develop a Quality Report that embeds quality principles into routine statistical production workflows rather than treating them as an ex post exercise. Each report undergoes structured review by internal and external experts, creating an iterative feedback loop that strengthens methodological rigour, transparency, and coherence across the statistical ecosystem. This is followed by a formal Quality Assessment Meeting, which serves as a key governance touchpoint where domain statisticians, quality experts, and senior reviewers collectively evaluate each statistical product through evidence-based deliberation and consensus-building.

Importantly, the quality assessment workflow is explicitly designed to support publication and user communication. Each assessed statistical product culminates in an approved Quality Statement published alongside the official statistics. All publications and their associated Quality Statements are disseminated through Bayaan, SCAD’s AI-powered official statistics dissemination platform. By integrating quality assessment outcomes directly into Bayaan, SCAD ensures that quality is not treated as an internal or compliance-only exercise, but as a visible and user-oriented commitment to transparency, accessibility, and trust.

Taken together, this workflow embeds quality considerations across the full statistical production lifecycle, strengthens institutional capabilities, and reinforces a culture that prioritizes methodological excellence, transparency, and continuous improvement.

Main author / Presenter
Qais Al Junaibi, Sapphire Yu Han
Statistics Centre Abu Dhabi (SCAD), United Arab Emirates

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Qais Al Junaibi holds a bachelor’s degree in Statistics from the United Arab Emirates University. He began his professional career in 2001 as a Statistical Researcher at the General Administration of Customs in Abu Dhabi. In 2013, he assumed the role of Director of Industry and Business within the Economic Statistics Department at the Statistics Centre Abu Dhabi, where he contributed to supervision, management, and the planning and implementation of key statistical projects. Since 2022, he has served as an Expert in Statistical Quality Assurance, leading Peer Review projects alongside his responsibilities in statistical quality management. In this role, he supports the application of international standards and promotes a culture of continuous improvement in the production of official statistics. Dr. Sapphire Yu Han achieved her PhD in demography at VU vrij university Amsterdam and she is a Statistical Quality Expert at Statistics Centre Abu Dhabi (SCAD). Her work focuses on statistical quality, official statistics, metadata, and AI-ready documentation. She is also Co-Lead of the AI-Ready Dissemination Project under the UNECE High-Level Group for the Modernisation of Official Statistics, supporting the development of approaches that enable official statistics to be more accessible and usable in AI-driven environments. She previously worked with UN, OECD, and Statistics Netherlands.

CO-AUTHORS:

Presentation title
Strengthening Coordination and Quality in Decentralized Statistical Systems: Insights from the Moroccan Experience
PRESENTATION

In many countries, National Statistical Systems (NSS) are organized according to a decentralized architecture involving multiple producers of official statistics operating within diverse institutional, organizational, and operational frameworks.

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While such a configuration allows for sectoral expertise and access to a wide range of data sources, it also generates significant challenges in terms of coordination, coherence, comparability, and quality assurance across the system.

The Moroccan NSS provides a relevant case study of such a multi-producer configuration facing coordination challenges. In recent years, increasing data demands, the expanded use of administrative data, and the acceleration of digital transformation have further underscored the growing importance of effective coordination mechanisms, as well as the use of common quality references across producers. In this context, the High Commission for Planning (HCP), as the central coordinating authority of the NSS, has initiated a structured and progressive reflection aimed at strengthening statistical governance, enhancing coordination mechanisms, and promoting a shared, system-wide approach to quality.

This paper contributes to this reflection by examining key dimensions of coordination and quality in a decentralized statistical system. It focuses in particular on governance arrangements, coordination instruments, and the operational use of common methodological and quality frameworks, notably the Generic Statistical Business Process Model (GSBPM), as tools to foster convergence of practices, interoperability, and consistency across statistical producers. Special attention is given to the challenges and opportunities associated with the increased reliance on administrative data, which has further highlighted the need for clear governance structures and harmonized quality standards at the system level.

The paper also discusses how recent peer review findings have contributed to framing this reflection around collective awareness and institutional alignment, and creating momentum for system-wide coordination reforms.

By situating the Moroccan experience within a broader perspective, this contribution aims to enrich the ongoing discussion on coordination and quality in official statistics and to provide analytical insights and reform pathways that may be relevant to other decentralized, multi producer statistical systems.

Main author / Presenter
Nada Edrissi
High Commission for Planning (HCP), Morocco

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Nada Edrissi is a Statistician Engineer at the High Commission for Planning (HCP), Morocco, with over 13 years of experience in official statistics. She currently serves as Chief of the Division of Statistical Methodology and Regional Coordination, where she leads the development and implementation of system-wide quality assurance frameworks across the National Statistical System, aligned with international standards, including the GSBPM and the development and operational use of quality reports. She is the National Coordinator of the Peer Review of the Moroccan National Statistical System and co-leads a national project on statistical system modernization, focusing on statistical governance, coordination mechanisms, quality labelling, and capacity building. Her professional background includes leading the 2023 Economic Census and contributing to the digital transformation of the Statistical Business Register. She actively participates in international statistical initiatives, including MEDSTAT V, and has presented her work at international conferences on business registers and data quality.

Presentation title
Italian National Statistical System: Past and Present, Challenges and Opportunities from Eup Survey Data
PRESENTATION

The National Statistical System (Sistan) is the network of public and private entities that provides official statistical information to the country and to international organisations.

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Sistan aims to enable more effective management of national statistical activities, increasing the capacity to respond to the country's information needs. Since its establishment and since the entry into force of European Regulation No. 223/2009, Sistan has operated consistently and as an active part of the European Statistical System (ESS), placing European and international information needs at the centre of its statistical planning, in addition to national needs.

As of December 31, 2025, Sistan encompasses 3,300 offices, including 14 entities, namely Italian National Institute of Statistics (Istat), and the Other National Authorities (ONAs), which are dedicated to adhering to the European Statistics Code of Practice and related documents. Istat is the coordinator of this quite complex system and has progressively intensified its efforts to enhance the quality of statistics produced by the Statistical Offices within Sistan.

The “Survey on the identifying details, resources and activities of the statistical offices of the Sistan (Eup)” is conducted annually, involves all the Statistical Offices of the entities of the National Statistical System and collects personal and identifying information on the Statistical Offices of the System, their managers, office staff and the statistical activities carried out during the year. It is included in the National Statistical Programme and it is carried out in accordance with the annual requirements of Legislative Decree No. 322 of 1989 (Article 6, paragraph 6). The information is collected with the Cawi technique. Over the last 16 editions (2011-2026), a dual-format survey model has been established: 1) a short form questionnaire, administered to offices in municipalities that are not provincial capitals with less than 30,000 inhabitants (ca. 2,700 offices); 2) a long form questionnaire, administered to offices within larger administrations (ca. 600 offices). This paper will show the results of the latest Eup survey (2026), focusing mainly on the questions useful for monitoring the quality matters. Furthermore, the changes that have occurred in the Sistan network over the last 20 years will be illustrated, starting from some available data from previous Eup surveys.

Main author / Presenter
Paola Giordano
The Italian National Institute of Statistics (Istat)

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Paola Giordano, researcher, has been an expert in environmental and agricultural statistics since 1994. She has worked for public and private research institutes on national and international projects. She has been working at Istat for 15 years. After several years as an expert in agricultural statistics, in recent years she has focused on strengthening the quality of statistics produced by the National Statistical System (Sistan) network and on implementing the “Public Statistics Hub” project, a centralized platform for the dissemination of aggregate data produced by Sistan. She is currently responsible for the "Survey on the identifying details, resources and activities of the statistical offices of the Sistan (Eup)".

CO-AUTHORS:

Presentation title
Statistical Quality Matters in Africa
PRESENTATION PAPER

Quality is a major concern for stakeholders in national statistical systems in Africa.

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Indeed, on the one hand, these systems must meet international and regional data requirements, in particular those of international institutions such as the African Union, the World Bank or the IMF, as well as regional organisations promoting integration and development. On the other hand, as in European countries, quality is a central issue in the development of official statistics: the National Strategies for the Development of Statistics adopted by many African countries place strong emphasis on it.

Statistical capacities across more than fifty African countries are highly heterogeneous. Should quality requirements be implemented only once a statistical system has reached a certain level of capacity? On the contrary, it appears necessary to adapt quality requirements to local realities, whatever they may be, by defining priorities and realistic ambitions and by developing implementation methodologies tailored to a specific context.

While the European Union relies on the European Statistics Code of Practice, the African Union has adopted the African Charter on Statistics, which sets out several principles related to quality. In addition, there are the IMF’s Special Data Dissemination Standard and the United Nations’ Manual on National Quality Assurance Frameworks.

As a result, more than fifteen African countries are currently engaged in a formal quality process, notably through the establishment of a National Quality Assurance Framework. These initiatives have often been supported by international institutions such as PARIS21 (OECD), regional organisations such as AFRISTAT, or national statistical institutes such as INSEE or Statistics Canada. Peer reviews are also regularly conducted across the continent.

This paper aims at providing an overview and an analysis from INSEE’s standpoint of the current situation and the perspectives in the field of quality in Africa. It also lays the groundwork for a reflection on the support that can be provided by European countries to African NSIs, and on the possible similarities this support can have with the one already given to candidate countries for European Union membership in developing the quality of their statistical systems.

Main author / Presenter
Olivier Gourdon
National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (INSEE), France

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Olivier Gourdon has worked for seven years as responsible for statistical cooperation with Mediterranean countries at Insee, facilitating and programming technical support by the French Official Statistical System to NSIs of the area. He also provided support for statistical communication to Sub-Saharan African NSIs. He previously served as Administrative Manager, Research Officer and Head of Partnership Relations at the French National Observatory of Crime and Criminal Justice. He is now a quality expert within INSEE’s Quality Unit.