1. “Managing Modern National Statistical Systems in Democratic Societies”
Tacis High Level-Seminar Vienna, August 31 – September 2, 2005
Session 5:
Assuring High Quality Products in Official Statistics by Quality Management
Doc. TACIS
Russian Federation
Vladimir Strukov

2. QUALITY ASSURANCE IN OFFICIAL STATISTICS
V.A. Strukov – head of the Board of statistical observations and control of Federal Statistic Service
QUALITY ASSURANCE IN OFFICIAL STATISTICS

3. QUALITY COMPONENTS OF STATISTICS
Integrity
Relevance
Reliability
Accuracy
Timeliness
Availability
Interpretability
Coherence 
FEDERAL STATE STATISTIC SERVICE

4. THE TERMS ARE INTEPRETED AS FOLLOWS:
Integrity is a scientifically-grounded strategy and a strict following the methods of observations when accumulating, processing and distributing statistics;
Relevance is a qualitative valuation of necessity degree of statistics for a user, i.e. to what extent the data serves the their purpose and if they are brought to the user’s notice;
Reliability contains the degree of appraisal of the statistical observations outcomes and is measured by the term of error related to the statistical sampling, non responses of respondents, deliberate information distortion, as well as statistical processing; 
FEDERAL STATE STATISTIC SERVICE

5. THE TERMS ARE INTEPRETED AS FOLLOWS:
Accuracy of statistical factor validation describes a random sampling error and defines deviation of an estimated value from its average according to all possible sampling methods (as a rule, accuracy of statistical factor validation is characterized by its dispersion, standard error, variation coefficient (relative standard error) and confidence interval);
Timeliness reflects the duration of period acceptable for users, and lasting from the observed event to the publishing or passing requested data to a customer. It is also defined by the marginal time interval for statistics to be still relevant and in demand for the users; 
FEDERAL STATE STATISTIC SERVICE

6. THE TERMS ARE INTEPRETED AS FOLLOWS:
Availability reflects the status of statistics readiness for official distribution together with awareness of the users about potentials and sources to obtain the information they are interested in;
Interpretability (clarity) of statistics is defined by accuracy of statistical terms used in publications;
Coherence is a rate of complete reflection of the statistical data and logical interrelationship between the results of the statistical observation and the data resulted from other researches or factors obtained on their basis with the help of calculations. 
FEDERAL STATE STATISTIC SERVICE

7. RATING SYSTEM OF QUALITY OBSERVATION
Rating system of quality observation takes into account the adjustment factor for a definite sort of observation, grade of a certain response for a question, and weighting coefficient of a quality criterion value.
Four stages of Rating system of quality observation:
Filling in the Questionnaire of the quality evaluation of the observation by its initiators;
In accordance with the outcomes of Questionnaire there calculated rating system of quality observation, a number of responses due to the corresponding quality aspects (filling in the work sheets);
Analysis of the data obtained, defining the quality characteristics for the observation;
Recommendations related to introducing improvements of observation quality. 
FEDERAL STATE STATISTIC SERVICE

8. QUALITY ASSURANCE IN OFFICIAL STATISTICS
V.A. Strukov – head of the Board of statistical observations and control of Federal Statistic Service
QUALITY ASSURANCE IN OFFICIAL STATISTICS