Principle 3: Adequacy of Resources

Human, financial and technical resources, adequate both in magnitude and in quality, are available to meet statistical needs.

The training of the French Official Statistics Authority (ASP) staff is perfectly in line with needs. Future executives are recruited by highly selective competitive recruitment processes, open to students with at least two years of higher education, in fields useful to statisticians working in Official Statistics (statistics, mathematics, economics, social sciences, etc.). INSEE provides successful applicants a very high level initial training, the excellence of which is well known. They are trained in two schools that form part of the Group of National Schools of Economics and Statistics (Ouvrir dans un nouvel ongletGENES): the National School of Statistics and Economic Administration (Ouvrir dans un nouvel ongletENSAE) and the National School of Statistics and Data Modelling (Ouvrir dans un nouvel ongletENSAI). These schools adapt to remain consistent with government and European guidelines on higher education and to meet INSEE’s skills needs. Intermediate level staff are trained at INSEE’s training centre in Libourne (Ouvrir dans un nouvel ongletCEFIL) with curricula that are also adapted to the needs of Official Statistics. Throughout their careers, staff also have access to a very wide range of continuing training, provided in schools or in INSEE institutions.

Staff are assigned as part of annual mobility campaigns open across the French Official Statistical Service: positions are precisely described detailing the duties and skills required, interviews are held between candidates and recruiting services and assignments ensure the best possible fit.

INSEE’s budget is included in the provisions allocated to the Ministry of the Economy in accordance with the French Finance Act. In 2019, for the first time, INSEE signed a three-year budget agreement with the state. The agreement contract defines a financial trajectory through to 2022 for both personnel and other costs, allowing INSEE to commit to its multi-year investment projects in the knowledge that the necessary resources are available.

The computerisation of statistical production activity is at the heart of INSEE’s history. Regular investments are made in the current IT infrastructure to remain state of the art and secure the information system. In addition, the development and maintenance of the INSEE applications are managed by dedicated teams. Finally, the IT equipment of the Institute’s staff is subject to a policy of sustained renewal and, since the Covid pandemic, the staff is equipped with roaming workstations.

The scope, detail and cost of statistics are commensurate with needs.

Through various bodies, INSEE integrates controlling and streamlining scope, detail and costs into its practices.

The INSEE Investment Committee examines envisaged projects within the framework of the guidelines defined by the Management Committee. In addition to recommendations for improving the process, it issues an opinion on the appropriateness of the project and its feasibility. This opinion takes into account the scope of the project, cost and expense estimates, a risk assessment, user expectations, identified benefits and its impact in relation to INSEE’s strategic focus areas. Beyond the activities of this committee, the estimation of the costs necessary to carry out a statistical operation is anchored in INSEE’s practices, whether it is a survey, the management of a directory, the production of a statistic, etc.

INSEE’s Department of Statistical Methods optimises and streamlines the methods, thus helping to adjust them to needs: in particular, it promotes good practices in the collection, processing and analysis of information and contributes to production by drawing samples, for example.

For statistical surveys, the Official Statistics Quality Label Committee is the body that, through its conformity opinions, ensures that the scope, detail and cost of statistics are commensurate with needs. It ensures compliance with statistical quality criteria and the recommendations of the European Statistics Code of Practice as regards methodology, the collection protocol, the relevance of the questions in relation to the terms of the opinion on appropriateness and the suitability of the dissemination for the objectives announced.

Efficiency audits by the INSEE Internal Audit Unit examine the proper use of resources and the potential for savings or redeployment margins on a constant budget, while ensuring the expected level of quality of the work and products.

Procedures exist to assess and justify demands for new statistics against their cost.

Various procedures exist to assess and justify requests for new statistics. The National Council for Statistical Information (Ouvrir dans un nouvel ongletCNIS) examines all new survey projects relating to Official Statistics. A thematic committee studies the case by measuring the actual public need that would be met by the new survey and ensuring that this information is not available elsewhere. On this basis, the National Council for Statistical Information (CNIS) issues an opinion on appropriateness, which is then supplemented by the Ouvrir dans un nouvel ongletOfficial Statistics Quality Label Committee.

Before projects are presented to the National Council for Statistical Information (CNIS), INSEE’s Investment Committee examines them in terms of their cost and the needs they meet. In addition, INSEE conducts a three-year work planning exercise, which provides an overall three-year framework for the work to be carried out in INSEE’s establishments. The procedure implemented aims to find the best possible alignment between costs and resources. Thus, the question of the cost of statistics is addressed through the chosen survey method, the length of the questionnaire, the human resources needed, etc.

Procedures exist to assess the continuing need for all statistics, to see if any can be discontinued or curtailed to free up resources.

The National Council for Statistical Information ( Ouvrir dans un nouvel ongletCNIS) contributes to verifying the existence and continuation of needs through its opinions on appropriateness, while also highlighting new needs, as part of a forward-looking approach. Its opinions are issued for a fixed period of time, of only a few years, for regular surveys.

The continuation of needs is also verified within INSEE. In many fields, meetings are organised with the main users of the statistics produced and other stakeholders in order to take stock of the statistical operation concerned and the dissemination arrangements, to consider possible developments and to anticipate the emergence of new needs. For example, an annual meeting with the professional federations is formalised to determine their expectations relating to the development of production price indices.

In addition, INSEE is continuously looking for data sources that make it possible to reduce or eliminate a survey, such as the project to use scanner data from major retailers, which should replace a survey of supermarkets for the calculation of turnover indices for this sector.