Information is valuable in difficult times: International Association of Official Statistics (IAOS)

Krakow (Poland), April 26-28, 2022. IAOS is an association founded in 1985 that annually brings together producers and users of official statistics at its International Conferences. This year’s conference was held with the support of the National Statistical Office of Poland and the Statistical Office of Krakow. The common thread of the Conference was to discuss the importance of statistics during the pandemic as the fundamental input for monitoring government responses to the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. The nearly 40 sessions addressed the multiplicity of sources and providers of information, which makes it difficult to differentiate accurate and reliable data from those that are not.

The National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI), which is part of the Scientific Committee of the Conference through the vice-president of the Statistical Information Subsystem of Government, Public Security and Justice Administration, Adrián Franco, organized three sessions.

One on the relevance of corruption data for official statistics with the participation of Enrico Bisogno, Chief of the UNODC Data Development and Dissemination Section, Salomé Flores, Coordinator of the UNODC INEGI Center of Excellence and Oscar Jaimes, Director of Government, Security and Justice Statistics at INEGI. During this session, the challenges and advances in the measurement of corruption at the global, regional and national levels were presented, the latter highlighting the different statistical projects of INEGI in this area.

The second session dealt with crime and prison statistics during the COVID-19 pandemic. This session featured Fatma Usheva, UNODC Researcher, as well as Salomé Flores and Oscar Jaimes, who reviewed some key indicators of trends in crime and prison statistics, before and during confinement.

The third session organized by INEGI highlighted what official statistics can reveal about violence against women and included the participation of Francesca Grum, Assistant Director of the United Nations Statistics Division, Angela Me, Chief of the UNODC Research and Trends Division, INEGI President Graciela Márquez and Giuseppina Muratore from the Italian Institute of Statistics (ISTAT). During the session, the speakers shared the most recent methodological developments, as well as the experiences of Mexico and Italy in the generation of data on this priority phenomenon.

Finally, Ms. Angela Me moderated a panel on the role of statistical bodies in societies and why their professional independence is their indispensable foundation for building trust in the data they generate.

During the discussion among the speakers and those who attended the sessions, the importance of strengthening the countries’ capacities to generate crime statistics and statistics on the criminal justice system in order to support public policy decision-making processes became evident.