Standards as the backbone for official statistics, how well do they fit within national and international systems?12 or Does the obsession with cross-national comparisons blind us to the weakly implemented standards behind them?

Abstract

Standards, guidelines, and recommendations3 in statistics are undoubtedly important building blocks of modern global official statistics. They are main achievements of the harmonization work of the global community of official statisticians and are the backbone of the system, essential for maintaining high quality by using well-developed and documented methodologies and procedures, and for facilitating cross-national and cross-regional comparison of scores on indicators and trends. However, beyond such positive assessed achievements, the development, implementation, and use of ‘standards’ can also be characterized by a variety of negatively assessed characteristics. For example, in the development of standards, not every situation of a country or region can be or is sufficiently weighted or involved, countries and regions lack resources for full implementation, and the use of the standards according to the ‘required operational level’ is insufficient or the ‘standards’ do not fit the socio-economic, cultural, or political situation in a country resulting in a non-valid picture and unfit for use in policymaking. Therefore, though the ‘standards’ are the backbone of modern official statistics it is valid to question if the frequent use of cross-national comparisons unequally dismisses the cultural specificities of a country or region. It is also relevant to ask if the standards that are used to produce the indicators for cross-national comparisons are sufficiently implemented to allow for valid comparisons. And in general, one might question if there is a misfit between the emphasis on and practice of cross-national comparisons by international organizations and the attention to the level and awareness of the implementation of the standards used to produce the indicators on the country level.