Irish Statistical System Code of Practice

The Central Statistics Office (CSO) has a formal coordination role to play across the public service in relation to Official Statistics. This coordination role is set in a legal context in both national (Statistics Act, 1993) and EU legislation ( Amended Regulation EC No. 223/2009).

For Official Statistics to be of value they must be trusted. Achieving and maintaining trust requires that statistics are produced in an objective, transparent and independent manner. In many countries codes of practice for Official Statistics have been developed to enshrine those principles and protect trust. While compilers of European statistics are expected to comply with the European Statistics Code of Practice, no comparable standard had existed in Ireland for other national Official Statistics. The 2011 Public Service Reform plan recommended (recommendation 2.10) that the CSO develop a Code of Practice and standards for the gathering and use of data for statistical purposes in the Public Service.

The introduction in 2013 of the Irish Statistical System Code of Practice (ISSCoP) for compilers of Official Statistics in the Irish Statistical System (ISS) addresses this. The National Statistics Board, in its Strategic Priorities for Official Statistics 2021-2026 , re-emphasised the importance of the ISSCoP and recommended that Public Sector Bodies producing Official Statistics should aspire to reaching a stage of compliance which would see their outputs branded with the ISSCoP quality assurance mark.

The Director General of the CSO will agree a list of Official Statistics with each public body that produces statistics within the ISS. These statistics will be assessed against the Code.
Only those statistics that are assessed as compliant with the ISSCoP will be designated as Official Statistics for the purposes of the ISSCoP and may be published under the ISSCoP Logo.

Irish Statistical System Code of Practice

Related Links