Page 243 - Invited Paper Session (IPS) - Volume 2

IPS224 Jorge T. et al.
INDEC's institutional history
The National Institute of Statistics and Censuses (INDEC) of Argentina was
created in 1968 by Law 17622. The legal framework was later expanded by
executive orders 3110/1970 and 1831/1993 and INDEC Provision 176/1999. In
its capacity as governing body of the National Statistical System (NSS) of
Argentina, INDEC regulates on national statistical matters and manages all
official statistics carried out in the country. The Institute is a public
deconcentrated body, of a technical nature, within the scope of the Argentine
Ministry of Treasury, and its Director-General is at the level of a Secretary of
State. Due to Argentina's presidential system of government, the Ministry of
Treasury is directly under the Nation’s President, as the Constitution
establishes that all executive power falls on the President.
Regarding the deconcentrated status, this is a mechanism in which
ministries delegate powers to other entities within their scope. It must be
noted that this status is different from the “decentralised” status. Although the
State delegates powers to a deconcentrated body, the latter does not have its
own legal personality, nor can it undertake obligations. Decentralised entities
do have these characteristics.
The current legal framework establishes, among other matters, the
following responsibilities for INDEC:
 to implement the statistical policy of the Argentine State;
 to structure and rule the NSS;
 to design statistical methodologies;
 to organise and manage statistical infrastructure related operations;
and
 to produce basic statistical indicators and social, economic and
demographic information.
The NSS is legally centralised and functionally decentralised. This means
that INDEC has regulatory authority over the central statistical services of the
National Government and the peripheral services, such as the Provincial
Statistical Offices.
Until early 2007, the technical independence of the Institute had been
respected by all National Public Administrations in matters such as the
definition of statistical methodologies, statistical production processes and
the publication of technical reports. For most of its more than 50 years of
existence, INDEC was considered to be a highly professionalised entity with
great technical capacity and a sound credibility of its statistical production.
The Institute also had an active international involvement in various specific
forums and exchange programs. These variables gave the Institute a de facto
protection of its professional independence.
The political intervention that took place between 2007 and 2015, widely
reported both nationally and internationally (TODESCA and MUÑOZ, 2017),

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