Page 69 - Invited Paper Session (IPS) - Volume 2

IPS179 Per Nymand-Andersen
the comparison and reuse of both euro area and national statistics. A core
function of the website is the ability to easily share the statistics in digital form,
either via email or social media, or by embedding the graphs into other
websites and downloading data. The embedding capability is a particularly
welcome feature for digital news media.
This website is innovative in many ways, and is based on a collaborative
7
model, with functionalities shared with the OECD. This is a concept can also
be shared with national central banks or other agents. The codes are freely
available reducing the time-to-market and costs. The website uses
nonstatistical terms while also providing the corresponding statistical
definitions. Furthermore, the website is accessible from PCs, tablets and other
mobile devices, and also includes short statisticsbased narratives accompanied
with visuals and tweets. It also uses open-source statistics software to monitor
usage. In a similar vein, STAP is embarking on reusing (the codes) of one of
Eurostat’s interactive digital publications.
The key concept is keeping it short and simple, together with
acknowledging that communicating understandable and easy-to-reuse
statistics not only supports statistical, financial and economic literacy, but also
facilitates the acceptance of sound and sustainable policy decisions. It is widely
agreed that fostering transparency regarding policy decisions, by providing
the underlying statistics, contributes to an efficient and effective pass-through
for these decisions and also facilitates the external acceptance process. The
broader the general understanding of statistics, the more likely it is that there
will be support for sound and sustainable policies. The increased use of good
quality statistics will lead to a better understanding of policy decisions and the
proactive communication of official statistics will enable external users to use
them appropriately, thereby providing their own analysis and contributions to
public debate for the collective benefit of society.
8

3. Visualisation of official statistics for user-centric communication
The modern world is a complicated place that faces increasingly complex
social, financial, economic and political choices. This requires a more
sophisticated way to communicate statistics. The challenge for the statistician
is to extract knowledge from the large pool of available data/statistics and to
present descriptive factual statistics in an economic and social context.
We must develop new techniques to manage, organise and release
descriptive factual statistics that facilitate digital sharing and reuse, thereby
adding user value by presenting them in a structured and interactive way. Here
again, statistical organisations have a competitive advantage based on their

7 See www.compareyourcountry.org
8 See for instance, Blinder et al. (2008), Blattner et al (2008), Nymand-Andersen (2013).
56 | I S I W S C 2 0 1 9