Commitment of the Director-General

Well before the development of the European Statistics Code of Practice, the legislator, INSEE and the Ministerial Statistical Offices had already taken measures to ensure and guarantee the quality of statistical outputs (introduction of sound methodological tools, development of quality reports, display of metadata, etc.).

The introduction of the Code of Practice in 2005 further reinforced these measures, while also adding a commitment to better inform users about the quality of the statistics produced.

This “quality” section sets out the rules, methods and means that enable official statistics to best meet quality standards. Their description is directly inspired from the sixteen principles of the European Statistics Code of Practice and its associated indicators.

Therefore, the publication of this section is a means of clearly demonstrating the implementation of the commitments of official statistics in the area of quality. I hope it provides our users with everything they need in order to better understand our statistics and therefore make the best possible use of them.

Director-General of INSEE

Jean-Luc Tavernier