Quality

Eurostat’s mission is to be the leading provider of high-quality statistics on Europe and quality considerations play a central role with regard to Eurostat corporate management as well as day-to-day statistical operations. A Eurostat team deals with quality management issues relating to both Eurostat and the ESS and holds regular meetings with quality managers from National Statistical Institutes to discuss the development of quality management within the ESS. The team also implements a quality assurance framework for Eurostat's statistical processes and outputs, based upon Total Quality Management principles. A dedicated section of the Eurostat web page on quality details all initiatives developed by Eurostat in this domain.

Under the European Statistical Law, Member States must provide reports on the quality of the data transmitted. Using the quality reports received from Member States, Eurostat is required to publish the summary reports on the quality of European statistics, including details on the extent to which concepts, definitions and classifications are consistently applied within the European Statistical System.

The quality of European statistics is also described in the metadata files, which accompany the data published by Eurostat. Statistical processes are in general documented using quality criteria and concepts related to the statistical production. More detailed documentation of the statistical production process is planned using the Eurostat Process Metadata Structure.

Eurostat publishes summaries, known as Quality Profiles, showing the main quality characteristics for the headline indicators used to monitor the implementation of the Europe 2020 strategy, and for the indicators used to monitor the EU Sustainable Development Strategy (Sustainable Development Indicators). The quality profiles are issued by Eurostat in close co-operation with the National Statistical Institutes of the EU-Member States. Quality profiles are available for most of the indicators. In the European Statistical Law, there is a requirement for sectoral legislation to specify a common structure and frequency for the quality reports.

Eurostat is developing an additional quality approach to better reflect the concept of fit for purpose: "certified quality", standard quality, experimental statistics.

Within Eurostat's quality assurance framework, all Eurostat statistical processes and their outputs are assessed over a 3-4 year time span, to identify areas for improvement and to highlight good practices. There are more than 130 statistical processes under way in Eurostat and around 35 of these are assessed each year. Two key outcomes of the assessment are the identification of improvements to the process and also of good practices that can be shared with other production teams. The first cycle of quality assessments took place between 2008-2011.

The key statistical outputs are examined in detail as part of the implementation of Eurostat's quality assurance framework. External experts are systematically included in the evaluation of the multi-annual statistical programmes. External experts are also involved in assessments of statistical processes that demand considerable Eurostat resources. In the current cycle of quality assessments in Eurostat, over one third of the statistical processes involve an external expert.

Since 2011, users' satisfaction surveys have been conducted on an annual basis and the results are made public.

The European Statistical Governance Advisory Board provides a further external view of Eurostat's activities and examines quality issues.