STRATEGIC COMMUNICATION PROJECT OVERVIEW 

CONTEXT

Official statistics are operating in a competitive and challenging environment – one that has changed significantly over the last twenty years.  For traditional users of official statistics their values and importance is undisputed.  Yet for the average citizen the digital and social media revolutions have meant that more and more people have instantaneous access to various data sources, outside official statistics.  The 24/7 news cycle is reality, trust in government is decreasing and the fake news phenomenon is growing.

Now more than ever, timely and relevant data and stories produced by statistical organizations are essential to healthy democratic societies as they remain the only independent, impartial, trusted and reliable source of official statistics.  For official statistics to be beneficial to society, policy debate, and decision-making they must be known, understood, communicated and used.

PROJECT OBJECTIVES

The objectives for the project are to provide statistical offices with:

• support in the development a strategic approach to communication and increase their capacity to review and renew their communication approach, methods and processes;
• with tools to increase their visibility, relevance and brand recognition; and
• tools to take a proactive approach to managing issues and reputation.

The outputs of the project will focus on enabling statistical offices to modernize their communications at the strategic level and help organizations look at communications strategies in a broader risk management and business continuity context. They include: 

•  Defining skillsets of a professional communication programme and organizational options for the strategic communication function within the statistical organization;
•  Developing a Communication Maturity Model, including metrics and a description of how to use the model and examples of how the model can be used;
•  Developing guidelines to create a communications strategy and its implementation plan (including examples);
•  Developing the branding options that are most relevant for statistical organizations; and
• Establishing an issues management process including guidance and tools to support statistical organizations in times of issues or crisis management.  

DATA ARCHITECTURE PHASE 2 PROJECT OVERVIEW 

CONTEXT

Statistical organisations deal with many different data sources – each with their own set of characteristics. Statistical organisations need to find, acquire and integrate data from both traditional and new types of data sources in an ever increasing pace and under ever stricter budget constraints, while taking care of security and data ownership.

The 2017 HLG-MOS Data Architecture project developed the first version of the Common Statistical Data Architecture (CSDA). This Reference Architecture is a template for NSOs in the development of their own Enterprise Data Architectures. 

The project will focus on providing a more robust version of the Common Statistical Data Architecture as a result of validation against a number of use-cases and integration with the outcomes from other related groups. It will also provide guidance on implementing the architecture.

PROJECT OBJECTIVES

The objectives of this project are:

•  To complete the development of the Common Statistical Data Architecture, testing the reference architecture defined in 2017 against other use-cases
• To apply and validate the Data Architecture against the outcomes from other groups like UN-GWG, Data Integration project and groups working on statistical ontologies.
• To provide guidelines to support statistical organisations in using the Common Statistical Data Architecture.