Governance of official statistics: Confidence in the quality of information

Official statistics are public goods supplied by a regulated and independent state monopoly and according to standards generally accepted as objective. In democratic societies, statistics is crucial as a reference in public debate; thus reliable, accurate, timely and internationally comparable information on various topics are deemed essential. This monopoly which took a long time to emerge and to consolidate through the 19th century together with the founding of the national states, seems now to be threatened by the availability of free “Big Data” sources on one side, and on the other side, by the mounting scepticism of public opinion concerning holistic information provided by state bureaucracies. “Big Data” and “post-factual” are the two key words representing dynamics that make it necessary to ask once more well-known questions, namely, what task and position official statistics should have in our society, how quality of information could be preserved under new circumstances, and lastly, how to ensure sustainable public confidence in these statistics. © 2017, Springer-Verlag GmbH Deutschland.