Quality Management in Statistical Agencies – Introductory Course

Course Leader

Giorgia Simeoni

Employees of national statistical agencies involved in quality management, measurement and reporting.

Sound command of English. This course is intended for staff of national statistical authorities involved in quality management, measurement, and reporting, with an interest in applying ESS quality frameworks and methods in statistical production.

Participants will understand different quality concepts, European Statistical System (ESS) quality criteria, the European Statistics Code of Practice and its Common Quality Framework and know how to apply methods to measure quality concepts

The course should relate to the quality framework of the European Statistical System and explain the European quality tools and their implementation. It should focus on commonly accepted and widely used quality methods in the European context to enable the development and to harmonize the statistics production in the European Statistical System. 

• Definition of quality in statistics 

• European Statistics Code of Practice (CoP) and ESS Quality Assessment Framework (QAF)

• Main concepts of quality dimensions 

• Product quality and quality reporting 

• Tools for measuring product quality 

• Process quality 

• Tools for measuring process quality components (brainstorming, current best methods, technical tools, self assessments, auditing, and benchmarking) 

• Quality management and quality frameworks: Total Quality Management (TQM)/ European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM), The Common Assessment Framework (CAF), International Standards Organisation (ISO9001:2008) 

• Tools for measuring perceptions of various actors (customer satisfaction, public opinion, and staff opinion) 

• Quality management and policy. 

Participants will understand different quality concepts, the European Statistics Code of Practice, and quality criteria, and know how to apply methods to measure quality concepts.

• Lectures and examples

• Group works, discussions

• Participant presentations (a few) and discussion together

• Exchange of experiences on national practices

Required Reading 

None

• European Statistics Code of Practice

• ESS Quality Assurance Framework

• ESS quality definition

• (see http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/quality/overview)

None

Trainers from ISTAT: Giorgia Simeoni (Course leader), Gabriele Ascari, Giovanna Brancato, Francesca Budano and Maria Francesca Loporcaro