For more openness, coordination and harmonisation in public statistics

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Basel, 04.04.2024

Consultation response on the new Ordinance on Federal Statistics

Dear Federal Councillor, 

Dear Sir or Madam

We are pleased to take the opportunity to comment within the framework of the consultation on the new Ordinance on Federal Statistics .

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This statement is accordingly limited to our core competences and interests. We do not comment on behalf of the association on the other matters of the consultation; this should be taken neither as approval nor as rejection. From our perspective, we would like to note the following:

Art. 10 Fact sheets

We welcome the idea of fact sheets (Art. 10) for statistical activities and results, but propose that this article be partly reworded in order to increase transparency and make the data available in a user-friendly way. This requires common binding standards for harmonising the fact sheets (metadata standards) and a central platform on which they are easily accessible to the public. Clear requirements should also improve, as far as possible, the information on statistics in Switzerland, not only on federal statistics.

1 The statistical activities and results published within the meaning of Article 18 FStatA are described in a uniform fact sheet (metadata) that provides information on the method used, the variables used, the frequency of publication and the date of the survey or census.

2 The federal statistics producers publish the relevant fact sheets on their websiteon a central platform on the internet. 

3 The FSO defines, involving the statistics producers of the Confederation, cantons and communes, binding requirements for fact sheets (metadata) for the Federal Administration, advocates compliance with them vis-à-vis cantons and communes and provides a template for fact sheets.

Art. 42 Open Government Data

The Federal Act on the Use of Electronic Means to Fulfil Official Tasks (EMOTA) marks a milestone for Open Government Data (OGD) in Switzerland by introducing the principle of open by default at federal level in statute law. As the Swiss Data Steward and home of the OGD office, the Federal Statistical Office (FSO) has a role model function in implementing Art. 10 EMOTA. We naturally welcome Art. 42 in principle: official statistics, when available in an open and reusable format, are of considerable benefit to the economy, society, research and the environment (high-value datasets). To this end, it is important that (as far as possible) all statistical results are published centrally as OGD in a form suited to their use. 

Moreover, the social and economic value created by the free use of specific valuable statistical results exceeds the (potential) revenue generated by the Federal Administration from “use for commercial purposes”. 

We therefore propose the following amendments to paragraphs 1 and 3:

1 The federal statistics producers publish all the portfolio-listed (Article 9) statistical results in accordance with Article 5 of the Ordinance of DD.MM.YYYY¹² on the Federal Act on the Use of Electronic Means to Fulfil Official Tasks.

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3 Article 20 paragraph 1 FStatA also applies to statistical results that are published under paragraph 1 and.

As official statements, published tables and graphics are important elements of political debate and, for the sake of the reproducibility of results and the traceability of conclusions based on statistics, not least because misinterpretation is always possible, should not only be archived but also kept freely accessible. We do not consider the argument of excessive effort to be valid where data management is efficient. It must be ensured that the data needed by third parties – in particular also (data) journalists – to replicate the associated graphics and tables without disproportionate effort is published in a form suited to its use:

2 The graphics and tables of a dataset published under paragraph 1 are also need not additionally be published in machine-readable form and in an open format ., so that third parties can create them themselves with little effort.

We thank you for the attention you give to our comments and ask you to take our concerns into account. We will be happy to answer any questions.

Kind regards

Andreas Kellerhals, President                      Florin Hasler, Managing Director