COVID-19 : unprecedented situation, unprecedented official statistics

Abstract

The COVID-19 outbreak dominated the beginning of 2020. Almost every country and every socio-economic sector is facing this unique situation. Official statistics need to confront new challenges, both internally and externally. Internally, every National Statistics Office (NSO) needs to protect their workers, reorganize their way of working, and ensure the regular statistics production. Externally, NSOs are called to make a statistical description of an unprecedented complex reality.The aim of an NSO is not only to produce official statistics but also to provide a realistic ‘picture’ of our world, even in times of crisis. However, an official statistics system should not limit itself to those standard tasks. NSOs should provide and participate to the production of data and information on COVID-19. For instance, the United Nations Statistics Division is actively recommending guidelines, sharing experiences and collecting data for COVID-19 (United Nations Statistics Division 2020). However, under the threat of COVID-19 many countries are considering official statistics as a non-essential service (Cheung 2020a). Are official statistics a non-essential service? The aim of this letter is: (1) to analyze the role of NSOs during the COVID-19 health crisis, (2) to summarize challenges and opportunities lying ahead, (3) to trigger the discussion about the role of NSOs.