Page 182 - Special Topic Session (STS) - Volume 2

STS479 Saidi H.
analysis is also a very serious limitation for the NIS, and is even threatening its
relationship with users, including the government.
To overcome all of these difficulties and dysfunctions, and with the aim of
reinforcing, in particular, adherence to the fundamental principles of official
statistics (professional and scientific independence, quality, dissemination,
etc.), a commission has been created within the NCS bringing together all the
actors of the system (producers and users, including civil society) and a bill has
been proposed to revise the current 1999 law. This draft law is inspired by the
framework law developed by the UN and the African Charter on Statistics. The
support of the twinning project was mainly in the organization of visits to
France and Italy to see closely the functioning of these systems, as well as the
presentation of strengths and weaknesses of the statistical laws of certain
countries in terms of statistical governance and compliance with the European
Code of Good Practice and others. The main novelties of this new law are:
 Adherence to the fundamental principles of official statistics, in
particular the professional independence of statisticians and
institutions responsible for statistical production;
 Reviewing the composition of the NSS by reducing the number of SSPs
and the scope of official statistics;
 Provision of micro-data for research purposes while ensuring
commitment to statistical confidentiality;
 Formalization of a procedure for drawing up the statistical program for
better coordination of the NSS.
Other measures have been taken in this context, including the start of the
implementation of the Tunisian Statistical Charter at NIS level, which aims to
adhere to the fundamental principles of official statistics and the African
Charter on Statistics. The work focused on developing a set of indicators of
evaluation and self-evaluation indicators and a roadmap for its
implementation. A highly participatory approach is followed to better
concretize the principles of the charter and encourage adherence of public
statistical structures to them.

III. Statistical production: Developing and strengthening economic
statistics
Statistical production in Tunisia has experienced a spectacular
development in recent years encouraged by the opening of the NIS on its
environment, in particular the main users of statistical information including
government, researchers and civil society ... etc. In this context, it is important
to note that the demographic and social component is relatively covered
despite the shortcomings noted, particularly in terms of the quality and
dissemination of certain demographic indicators. Nevertheless, economic
statistics continue to experience significant gaps in the quantity and quality of

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