Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística

Introduction

The integrity of official statistics and their public reliability are fundamental for society and governments. In order to ensure reliability, it is essential to guarantee the credibility of the institutions in charge of the production of official statistics.

In this context, the adoption, by the IBGE, of the “Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics”, which were established by the United Nations Statistical Commission in 1994 ¹ and approved by the United Nations General Assembly in January 2014, makes the main guidelines of the institutional practice transparent, as recommended by that Commission, contributing to the construction of reliability of the institute as an official statistical body of the Country.

Official statistics are information produced and disseminated by governmental agencies, in regular basis, ruled by legislation in terms of statistics and/or administrative regulations, subject to the fulfillment of a standardized system of concepts, definitions, statistical units, classifications, terminology and codes, aiming at picturing economic, social and environmental conditions; providing information for the planning, execution and monitoring of public policies; providing technical support for decision-making processes; and consolidating the exercise of citizenship.

The object of this document concerns more specifically Principle no 1 – transcribed below -, which establishes how official statistics should be disseminated.

Principle 1: Relevance, impartiality and equal access 

Official statistics provide an indispensable element in the information system of a democratic society, serving the Government, the economy and the public with data about the economic, demographic, social and environmental situation. To this end, official statistics that meet the test of practical utility are to be compiled and made available on an impartial basis by official statistical agencies to honor citizens’ entitlement to public information.

Therefore, the IBGE has as one of its goals making sure that the information it produces is disseminated impartially and provided equally to all users, without any privileges.

Ensuring equal access mostly lies in the realm of actions and practices of the Institution itself. On the other hand, ensuring impartiality concerns not only the institutional guidelines but also the ways of presenting results, the situations to be avoided and the caution to be taken in the dissemination, including, to a large extent, the behavior of the technical staff in charge of the results.

The technical staff performs a fundamental institutional role, for they take part in a decisive step in the fulfillment of IBGE’s mission. When disseminating data, technicians do not speak on their behalf, but on IBGE’s behalf. They represent the Institution before society, and must be aware and conscious of this role. And the IBGE, as a statistical body, should follow the Fundamental Principles of United Nations Official Statistics, among which is Principle no 1, pursuant to the need for impartiality in the dissemination.

Impartiality is, on its turn, a complex and difficult aspect, since it involves, besides institutional practices, the individual subjectivity of the technicians. Therefore, in order to reach it, it is necessary for the technicians and the Institution to work together, establishing guidelines to make the major criteria of good practices clear for official statistics dissemination.

In 2013, the IBGE published its Code of Good Practices², comprising a set of guidelines, structured by principles and indicators of good practices. In it, two principles stand out together with their respective indicators: Impartiality and Objectivity (Principle 7) and Accessibility and Transparency (Principle 17).

In this context, this document aims at providing some basic recommendations concerning impartiality in the presentation and dissemination of official statistics, both written and spoken, with views to implement criteria to make impartiality feasible.

Therefore, the recommendations described apply to the context of institutional disseminations, not to individual texts (written by IBGE servants not to meet the institution’s demand but individual purposes), which are submitted to congresses, seminars and the like. Individual texts should bring the following inscription: “The IBGE is exempt from any responsibility for the views, information, data and concepts expressed in the article, which are the sole responsibility of the authors.”

Before that, though, the main actions of the IBGE are indicated in terms of ensuring equal access to the information produced.

1) Equal access in the dissemination of official statistics and IBGE’s actions

In order to guarantee equal access, the IBGE has two major lines. One is directly dedicated to the procedures of dissemination to the public and the other relates to the procedures adopted in the production of the results of the information of a statistical nature.

Concerning the dissemination procedures, the IBGE offers several ways of information access and obtainment, in order to better serve the general public, either by means of publications or by means of electronic products and services.

Every year in December, the publishing calendars for the following year are released on the Internet, pointing out the day of the short-term indicators and the publishing month of the several statistical structural or special surveys. This way, everyone can know beforehand the dates when they will have access to the information.

In the dissemination of results with press conference, the release is made available for participants in the beginning of the event. Simultaneously, indicators and comments are published in the IBGE website. This dissemination routine, with data availability to the public domain in an ordered, standardized and transparent way ensures equal access and helps promote reliability in the Institution’s procedures.

As far as the production of results is concerned, the IBGE limits the previous access to survey results to the technicians in charge of the data production process and of their publication, either conventionally or electronically.

It is worthy mentioning the issue of precedence as an exception to the simultaneity of the dissemination of results. According to the established rules, the IBGE gives precedence to Government authorities, always observing the principle or transparency, with controlled and public access. The precedence of short-term indicators is ruled by Regulation no 355, of 11/05/2007³, and the precedence of structural or special surveys’ results is ruled by Regulation no 15, of 01/27/2005⁴, both of the Ministry of Planning, Budget and Management.

Following the recommendations of Regulation no 355, aforementioned, the results of short-term indicators should be informed to the authorities in the precedence list two hours before the dissemination to the general public, i.e., at 7 am. The dissemination to the public happens at 9 am on the same day. The list of names of the authorities entitled to precedence and the respective positions held by them is presented and constantly updated on the IBGE’s website.

In the case of short-term or special surveys, ruled by Regulation no 15, only the head of the Ministry of Planning, Budget and Management is entitled to precedence, to whom the results are forwarded forty-eight hours before the dissemination time. The forty-eight-hour anticipation of results is also ruled by R.CD no 07/2014, concerning partner institutions acting as study and/or survey sponsors and/or co-authors or the ones responsible for products resulting from the Cooperation Agreements or Terms.

Besides, there is the press embargo, only concerning structural and special surveys, which consists of applying to communication and information vehicles the same precedence established by Regulation no 15 aforementioned. Journalists, on their turn, commit themselves to disseminating results only on the date and time set by the IBGE. Such a procedure contributes to a better preparation of the material to be broadcast about the information produced.

2) Impartiality in the dissemination of official statistics: actions and guidelines in the IBGE

A crucial aspect in the dissemination of official statistics is the issue of impartiality, which relates to the nature itself of an official body of statistics and its institutional image. Data analysis in the dissemination of official statistics in the country has to do with making information as clear as possible without any kind of bias. Credibility and the understanding of the data being presented are dissemination priorities.

It is fundamental that society recognizes the statistical office as a reliable body due to its impartiality as a producer and a disseminator of information. Thus, all users can trust the results as a representation of relevant aspects of society.

Impartiality is a general right (of society and government) to public useful information of quality, with assurance of equal access and no interference in the portrait painted or in the interpretation of it. Data must be presented with no bias.

It is a question of effectively ensuring that the official agency is unbiased. Even though users’ appreciation of results and opinions on their implications might diverge, all should recognize the results as a picture of reality. This way, data analysis and dissemination must be carried out so as to promote this recognition.

Impartiality in the production and dissemination of official statistics can be recognized by means of some actions adopted by the IBGE, described as follows:

• Allow access to the same piece of information at the same time to all users (equal access and simultaneity in the dissemination).

• Make sure the information produced can be used by the public in general, regardless the source of funding.

• Implant and execute a systematic dissemination policy. All released results must be accessible to the public. There are no official results of exclusive use on the government’s or on any other agent’s side.

• Set release calendars indicating in advance the dissemination day of the short-term indicators and therelease month of the several statistics of structural or special surveys.

• Make clear the reasons for any change in the release date settled in the release calendars - which could only be grounded on technical criteria.

• Be absolutely free from external interferences onto what and how to disseminate data.

• Disseminate results on strictly statistical bases, i.e., those followed by documentation on the statistical practices, such as: information sources, concepts, classifications, methods and processes adopted to allow the correct interpretation of data by the users.

• Widely inform users beforehand of the changes on methodology or on content or on dissemination formats.

Allowing an unbiased presentation of results is also exercising the capacity of heads and technicians as to prevent them to be influenced by personal opinions and beliefs. Thus, it is important for the official statistical agency to be careful in relation to the content as well as to the ways of presenting results as another measure towards impartiality.

Usually, the presentation of results is followed by an analytical exercise of the data produced. Data analysis is the process through which order, structure, interpretation and meaning are given to data. The analysis allows for different approaches and requires extreme care in the interpretation. Moreover, in the analytical comments, either written texts for publication or oral presentations, the following characteristics should be observed:

- to be objective – avoid the inclusion of subjective elements, susceptible to different political or theoretical views. Whatever the result, it must be presented so as to reliably describe the data surveyed, independently from individual preferences or impacts on some users (regardless if it is “good” or “bad” news). Besides jeopardizing impartiality, value judgment and ajectives might hinder the understanding of the general public or deviate their attention from the focus of the information being released;

- to be neutral – in data interpretation, declarations must be made without reflecting conflicts of interest so as to avoid the possibility of being seen as political comments;

- not to infer certain results without a direct evidence – to restrain the analysis to the data and to the reference period of the information being released as well as to the values of the time series, not speculating on future results of data being released or factors that will influence them. Prospecting is not the object of official statistics, except for the Population Estimates and for the crop forecasts of the Systematic Survey of Agricultural Production – LSPA, due to the nature itself of the information.

As to the style and content of information presentation, the following guidelines should be taken into consideration:

- to facilitate the understanding and use the factual, comprehensive description, clearly and directly;

- to use concepts in the analysis and dissemination which are clearly described and widely accepted, preferably using consolidated technical terms;

- to use objective parameters in data analysis. For instance, sentences with the terms “the highest” or “the lowest” must have a concrete and objective reference;

- to keep standard formats in the display of results, in accordance with the nature of the information so as to facilitate the understanding, especially if comparisons are made throughout time.

Text in PDF format (in Portuguese)

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¹ See the text on http://unstats.un.org/unsd/dnss/gp/fundprinciples.aspx and https://www.ibge.gov.br/en/institutional/documents.html?option=com_content&view=article&id=21474.

² Código de boas práticas das estatísticas do IBGE. Rio de Janeiro: IBGE, 2013. 48p. Available at ftp://ftp.ibge.gov.br/Informacoes_Gerais_e_Referencia/Codigo_de_Boas_Praticas_das_Estatisticas_do_IBGE.pdf

³ Available at: https://www.ibge.gov.br/en/institutional/documents.html?option=com_content&view=article&id=8812