Quality has always been of considerable importance in official statistics. Users must be able to trust the findings of official statistics. Official statistics are produced without political influence, using recognised scientific methods and are an essential element of any democratic society.
For this reason, fundamental principles of official statistics have been drawn,up at national and international level. The UN Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics are a global benchmark and were used as a basis for the drafting of the European Statistics Code of Practice (CoP) by the European Union. The European CoP also applies to Switzerland, in particular to the Federal Statistical Office (FSO) and to the other national statistical authorities producing European statistics. Based on the CoP, the FSO and Swiss Conference of regional statistical offices (CORSTAT) have developed and adopted the Charter of Swiss Official Statistics, which applies to all statistical services producing and disseminating official statistics. These principles, laid down at both national and international level, can also be found in the Federal Statistics Act of 1992.
To ensure that these principles are applied, the FSO’s products and processes are subject to different control mechanisms in addition to the regular assessment and continues improvement of its work. The FSO’s quality management system, for example, incorporates management by processes and risk analysis, enabling it to have an overview of its strengths but also to detect areas in need of improvement.
For more information on the instruments available about quality management of public statistics in Switzerland, we invite you to consult page Tools on this subject.
