State Statistical Office of the Republic of Macedonia

Peer Review on the Implementation of the European Statistics Code of Practice in the Republic of Macedonia, and the coordination role of the State Statistical Office

This peer review report is part of a series of assessments, the objective of which is to evaluate the extent to which National Statistical Institutes (NSIs) of the enlargement countries comply with the European statistics Code of Practice (CoP). This series of assessments is based on a similar round of peer reviews carried out in EU Member States, and follows, as much as possible, the same methodology, slightly adapted to the context of the enlargement countries.

The CoP, which sets out a common quality framework for the European Statistical System (ESS), was first adopted in 2005 by the Statistical Programme Committee and updated in 2011 by its successor, the European Statistical System Committee. The CoP – 15 principles and related indicators of good practice – covers the institutional environment, the statistical production processes and the output of European statistics. The ESS is committed to fully complying with the CoP and is working towards its full implementation. Periodic assessments review progress towards reaching this goal.

The first round of peer reviews in the EU Member States in 2006-2008 was followed by a round of ‘light’ peer reviews and adapted global assessments in the enlargement countries in 2010-2012. The light peer reviews explored how the NSIs were progressing in implementing the parts of the CoP relating to the institutional environment and dissemination of statistics (principles 1-6 and 15). This resulted in reports for each reviewed NSI, available on the Eurostat website. These reports also include a set of improvement actions covering all the principles of the CoP; these formed the basis of the annual monitoring of the implementation of the CoP in the enlargement countries in the period 2011-2015.

In line with the reviews carried out in EU Member States in 2014-2015, the scope of this second round of peer reviews is broader: the assessment of CoP compliance covers all principles; the CoP compliance of selected other national producers of official statistics (as well as the NSI) in each country is assessed; and the way in which statistical authorities coordinate the production and dissemination of official statistics within their statistical systems is explored.

In order to gain an independent view, the peer reviews have been externalised and an audit- like approach, where all the answers to the self-assessment questionnaires have to be supported by evidence, has been applied. Each peer review in the enlargement countries is conducted by three reviewers and has four phases: completion of self-assessment questionnaires by a country; their assessment by Peer Reviewers; a peer review visit; and the preparation of reports on the outcomes.

The peer review of the Republic of Macedonia was conducted by Mr Richard Alldritt, Ms Isabelle de Pourbaix and Mr Torbioern Carlquist (representative of Eurostat), who conducted a peer review visit to Skopje on 13-16 February 2017.

This report focuses on compliance with the CoP and the coordination of official statistics within the national statistical system. It is forward looking and does not discuss events in the past. Instead, the report highlights some of the current strengths of the statistical system and contains recommendations for improvement.

You can download the entire document here and the improvement actions here.

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