All Times ET
Program is Subject to Change
TBD
Producing Official Statistics During the COVID-19 Pandemic (309741)
*Nadim Ahmad, OECD*Duncan Elliott, Office for National Statistics
*Corinna Konig, Institute for Employment Research
*Dane Mead, Australian Bureau of Statistics
*Tanya M Price, Australian Bureau of Statistics
*Luisa Ryan, Australian Bureau of Statistics
*Joseph Sakshaug, Institute for Employment Research / University of Mannheim
*Marieke Volkert, IAB
Keywords: pandemic, innovation, survey processes
The COVID-19 pandemic increased risks to the production of official statistics, particularly in relation to: maintaining response rates as employees moved to working from home or working reduced hours; established methods e.g. business register updating and seasonal adjustment; and the volume of government policies initiated in response to the pandemic that needed to be classified and implemented into economic statistics in near real-time. In addition, there was an unprecedented demand from users for more timely and detailed information to monitor the impacts. This moderated discussion reviews how National Statistical Organisations responded, covering a variety of topics including business register maintenance, innovations obtaining response, classification challenges, trend and seasonal adjustment for short term statistics, and future directions.