Welcome Message

Dear IAOS Members,

Entrusting me with the responsibility of the elected IAOS President position for the years 2023-2025  represents for me a great honor and privilege. I am thankful for recognition of my work and personal commitment to cooperate within the global statistical system.

In the past few years the IAOS community became even more diverse than before, proving that the IAOS is an inclusive organization of official statisticians, international statisticians, data users, academia, which makes  IAOS unique, but on the top of that, the IAOS is a NGO, which can speak their mind.

Together with the IAOS Executive Committee (EXCO) we will continue the work of our predecessors: we will strive to make our community grow, to improve the Statistical Journal of IAOS, to encourage more young statisticians to participate in the Young Statisticians Prize competition, and to organize IAOS conferences.

I am taking over the IAOS from Misha Belkindas who made it well recognized and  – together with former IAOS Presidents – contributed to the development of the IAOS as a strong organization with a strategic vision.

My goal is to make everyone aware of the role that the official statistics can and should play in the modern world, drawing a lesson from over two years of pandemic, where it showed resilience, a spirit of innovation and proved that without reliable, trustworthy data no valuable decision can be taken.

I am deeply convinced that we will continue to support the whole statistics community in building and maintaining trust in statistics, in both national and international dimensions. Our community has a special obligation to maintain good relations and deep collaboration on developing our common language of describing the reality. It is the obligation to care for the common public interest at the national level and exchange our experiences which can be beneficial to the broader international community.

The technological, methodological and organizational innovation time has come in official statistics.  There are great opportunities for developing new methods. We should be active in discussions and actively participate in activities aimed at improving the functioning of the state administration, ensuring the appropriate role and opportunities for official statistics systems. I would like to systematically introduce these issues into our discussions and use them to inspire further initiatives.

We want to address several questions troubling the community regarding such issues as the mission of official statistics, new governance arrangements,  relations with users, data stewardship issues, data science, new data sources, new partnerships, fake news and misuse of statistics, and last but not least, ethics in official statistics. Work in many of these areas is already underway in many forums, and it is good that our society also takes up these topics, deepening the discussion. We need to focus on further increasing the recognition of the official statistical system as a source of reliable information and further supporting the international community of official statisticians in their day-to-day endeavors. Krakow Group will help us achieve those outcomes by advising us on adapting to the new data ecosystems and information environments.

As the President of IAOS, I want to encourage my colleagues worldwide to collaborate simultaneously on many formats and platforms. I am particularly interested in increasing activity from regions which have been underrepresented so far. I am inviting all of you and other colleagues interested in improving official statistics to actively participate in IAOS activities. As we are a volunteer organization, we all rely on the good will and enthusiasm of many committed to improve official statistics as an evidence base for social and economic policy making in a democratic society.

Dominik Rozkrut
IAOS President