Innovation in the European Statistical System: Recent achievements and challenges ahead

Abstract

The National Statistical Institutes (NSIs) of the European Statistical System (ESS) have constantly strived to innovate products, processes and methods. Recent developments in the past decade have shown how rapidly data ecosystems are evolving across our globalised and digitalised societies. The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 represented a turning point for innovation in the ESS. The speed of change spiked: those NSIs that had established a solid ground for innovation managed to continue providing high quality statistics to society and policymakers, while exploiting the potential for innovation given by the availability of new data sources. Despite the pandemic slowly losing its grip, Europe has found itself in the middle of a new crisis with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Therefore, NSIs now face the challenge of keeping up the innovative work and rolling out these innovations into production. This paper provides an overview of the work on innovation done at the ESS level in recent years and its contribution to the resilience of the statistical system to respond to recent crises. Furthermore, taking stock of recent experiences, it presents some of the main challenges and enablers which are needed to sustain ESS innovation in the years to come.