Within the threefold governance of French official statistics, as it has been established by the Law on the Modernisation of the Economy of 4 August 2009, the National Council for Statistical Information sits alongside the Official Statistical Service and the Official Statistics Authority (Bureau, 2020). Positioned upstream of the system, its primary mission is to ensure consultation between the producers and users of official statistics. As a representative body of civil society, due to the wide range of bodies that contribute to it, the CNIS is both the place where the supply of and demand for statistics come together and is the vehicle that brings official statistics projects to the attention of users, to ensure that they meet their needs (Duport, 2009).

Official statistics cover a very broad field and are intended to meet the needs of all audiences, which are by nature extremely varied. From the general public who want to know the reference figure for inflation, to the social science researcher who wants to use the micro-data from the national victimization survey, for example, there is a continuum of users, with varying levels of expertise, who rely on statistical results for professional or private use in all fields. Faced with the abundant supply of statistics and the diversity of uses and users, how can we ensure contact between the two worlds of producers and users of statistics in a way that is coherent and standardised?

Each producer of statistics is more or less familiar with the traditional users of their data and can obviously organise discussions with a sample of them to discover new needs or to assess the relevance of existing statistics. They regularly do so: for example, business statisticians meet periodically with professional organisations to inform them and to seek their opinions on new work; the Ministerial Statistical Offices receive requests from the area-specific directorates of their ministry; INSEE organises frequent press conferences and, if necessary, puts journalists in direct contact with its experts; for new survey projects, the designers set up consultation committees, notably involving researchers. Demand from European bodies is handled, in turn, at the level of the European Statistical System and is integrated into national statistical projects at source.

The consultation mission of the CNIS is enshrined in the French Statistical Law of 1951, making it a legitimate place to inform all users about the producers’ statistical projects, as well as to determine needs and organise debate. Due to its cross-functional position, the CNIS also contributes to the Official Statistical Service (OSS): the consultation ensured by the CNIS thus leads to “proposals for the development of the statistical work programme”.

Although very stable in nature, statistical output is constantly evolving, particularly in response to the needs expressed within the CNIS. Thus, the major trends in the transformation of statistics and most of the major innovations have been accompanied from the outset by consultation between producers and users. A cross-functional example illustrates this point, the administrative sources.

In 2004, the work of the CNIS already showed a highly favourable assessment of the use of administrative sources for the production of statistics, in particular to meet the growing need for localised data resulting from decentralisation, but such uses were still few and scarce. In its vision of the future (Ouvrir dans un nouvel ongletCNIS, 2004), the CNIS encouraged producers to continue their efforts: “The Council stresses the importance it attaches to the use of administrative sources for statistical purposes in order to reduce the collection burden while improving the response to demand for information at local level”.

In 2009, in view of the progress made since 2004, the CNIS provided clarification on users’ expectations in terms of complementarity with the surveys: “The Council also supports the methodological work undertaken to link administrative data and survey data in order to follow individual trajectories, which makes it possible to better take into account the diversity of situations, particularly in economic and social terms...” (Ouvrir dans un nouvel ongletCNIS, 2009).

The latest medium-term orientations of the CNIS (2019-2023) point to the added value of new systems that aggregate several administrative sources: “The Council requests that all producers of official statistics carry out matching between data sources in order to enrich the analysis of the links between different topics, while ensuring that confidentiality is strictly respected where the matching operations concern personal information” (Ouvrir dans un nouvel ongletCNIS, 2019).

Beyond this example, the shared view of the medium-term orientations drawn up by the CNIS is thus the result of (new) needs expressed by users and progress made by producers that make them sufficiently realistic. (Ouvrir dans un nouvel ongletGeoffard, 2019) recalls the process of creating the national pupil identifier in statistical information systems in the field of national education and the decisive role that the CNIS played in this. The advances made in statistics on company groups also stem from a CNIS working group expressing significant informations needs (Ouvrir dans un nouvel ongletSalustro, Ménard and Depoutot, 2008). In another field, the CNIS’s pressing demand at the end of the last century for more localised data is now much better met thanks to the use of comprehensive sources and progress made in geo-referencing, which makes it possible to disseminate many indicators at a fine geographical level, while respecting statistical confidentiality.

The set of cross-functional or subject-specific orientations of the CNIS, resulting from consultation during the previous period, constitutes a multi-annual roadmap for the producers of official statistics, who are in charge of implementing them in their respective field (Ouvrir dans un nouvel ongletAfsa‑Essafi, 2019). The Official Statistical Service has some room for manoeuvre in this respect, as the priorities expressed by the CNIS, whether of a general or methodological nature, are rarely binding.

In particular, the medium-term opinions serve as a framework for the presentation to users of annual work programmes and producers’ activity reports. Users are thus regularly informed of how producers are responding to CNIS recommendations.

Alongside the collection of all prospective needs and the discussion of the work programmes of producers of official statistics, each new official statistics survey must receive an opinion from the CNIS, known as an “opinion on appropriateness”, before it is implemented.

This first step in obtaining registration in the official statistics survey programme aims to ensure the relevance of the project in terms of its aims, its place in the information system and the planned conditions for its dissemination. Users can react on the appropriateness of each operation. If the opinion on appropriateness is favourable, in a second step the project is subjected to a compliance review by the Official Statistics Quality Label Committee (Christine and Roth, 2020) to determine whether it meets the required quality standards. In total, between 30 and 40 opinions on survey appropriateness have been issued annually by the CNIS since 2017.

The CNIS review of the appropriateness of a new statistical operation is an important milestone before moving on to the technical appraisal of projects, which puts producers in a position to explain the merits of their project. While the overall appropriateness of each project is rarely debated, there may be some discussion about certain aspects of the proposed questions or protocol.

It is also an opportunity, when the project is in response to European demand, to specify the objectives pursued at this level and their consistency with the needs of national users. Questions regarding coordination with other surveys or other producers of official statistics can also arise. While the health of young people in schools is obviously a subject shared by the ministerial statistical offices DREES and DEPP, it also happens that another producer wishes to collect a survey on a related subject. Thus in 2020, the French Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction presented the CNIS with a survey project of teenagers in secondary schools and colleges on health and substances, a project which needed to be positioned in relation to the existing operations of the two MSOs.

Finally, as this last example illustrates, the scope of statistical productions covered by the CNIS is actually a little broader than the output of the Official Statistical Service alone: it covers all official statistics that meet this quality standard, including on a voluntary basis. Indeed, several public administrations or research centres aim for a quality level equivalent to Official Statistics for their surveys and are used to comply to the usual appropriateness and compliance procedures of CNIS and of the Official Statistical Service. INED, CÉREQ and the OFDT regularly carry out surveys that have obtained the Official Statistics label. Other administrations present their statistical work programmes to the CNIS systematically, particularly social security operators, which allows users to have a more complete view of the supply of official statistics.

Similarly to the situation with the new surveys, the Law of 1951 gives the CNIS an important role upstream of the use of administrative sources by the Official Statistical Service. Indeed, the CNIS is responsible (Article 7bis) for issuing a prior opinion on each request for access to administrative sources made by INSEE or a ministerial statistical office for the purposes of official statistics. Transmission is then made compulsory by a decision of the Minister for the Economy. Historically, transmission to the Official Statistical Service was only optional and did not require an opinion from the CNIS. The latter now establishes the statistical purpose and the appropriateness of the request, upstream, which makes it possible to make the compulsory nature clear. However, producer services can always conclude a bilateral contract for the transmission of data with the administrations that hold them, without recourse to a ministerial decision. Nevertheless, the use of Article 7bis and the recourse to the CNIS have two advantages: firstly, the final data become statistical data, covered by the specific statistical confidentiality rules, and secondly, the public is informed of these new statistics upstream. The publicity provided to this method of constructing statistics within the CNIS is the counterpart of each new survey project. Users often emphasise the need for researchers to have access to the micro-data at the end of the statistical operation.

Sometimes sensitive because they involve comprehensive personal data, requests for prior opinions on access to administrative databases by the Official Statistical Service are increasing, as is the use of these sources: 16 opinions were issued by the CNIS in 2020 under Article 7bis of the Law of 1951, following on from 19 in 2019 and only 8 in 2017. Consequently, in addition to presenting them operation by operation, the CNIS has chosen to increase the visibility of new uses of administrative data for statistical purposes by creating a section on its website which brings together all the “7 bis opinions” issued.

Since the Official Statistical Service’s gained access by law to private data in 2016, the CNIS is responsible for issuing a prior opinion on “the electronic transmission of information contained in databases held by legal persons under private law” to the Official Statistical Service.

This opinion from the CNIS does not replace the preliminary consultation between the producer of statistics and the organisations providing their databases, but it takes place after a wider consultation of many stakeholders, notably the future users of these statistics. The use of private data and, more generally, of new digital sources is indeed a natural development, to which Official Statistics devoted a working group in 2016 (Ouvrir dans un nouvel ongletBozio et al., 2017) and the advantages and limitations of which were highlighted in a “CNIS Meeting” in 2018 (Ouvrir dans un nouvel ongletElbaum, 2018).

Recently, the use of big data sources by the Official Statistical Service accelerated during the health crisis of 2020, with the advantage of freshness and frequency that they provide being decisive compared to traditional sources (Ouvrir dans un nouvel ongletCNIS, 2021b).

In practice, however, the Official Statistical Service has only had recourse to this legislative provision for the use by INSEE of scanner data from major retail chains for the calculation of a part of the consumer price index. In its opinion on this transmission, the CNIS suggested in particular that the increased accuracy of the new output be used to increase the detail of the statistics disseminated. A new use of the same scanner data may be forthcoming to improve short-term activity indicators in the commercial sector.

While the CNIS output mentioned so far take the form of general opinions or recommendations, it is not its only form of expression. Indeed, the CNIS is also the place where shared expertise on emerging subjects is developed, when they are of particular interest to the public debate.

The CNIS working groups are chaired by a person from outside the Official Statistical Service and bring together experts in the field, regardless of their affiliation. Their final report, which establishes a consensus between producers and users on the statistical needs and how to meet them, is generally referred to, sometimes even outside the statistical sphere (e.g. measuring undeclared work (Ouvrir dans un nouvel ongletGubian, Hagneré and Mahieu, 2017) has been followed up in the High Council on Financing Social Services (Haut Conseil du financement de la protection sociale)).

The list of CNIS working group reports illustrates the variety and richness of this work, whether it relates to:

In recent years, the CNIS working groups have also often focused on the dissemination of information and its accessibility (Access to administrative data for researchers (Ouvrir dans un nouvel ongletBozio et alii, 2017)). The significant progress made in access to data by researchers is partly the result of this discrete demand pressure, also expressed in the general orientations of the previous medium term.

In the field in question, the recommendations of the working groups constitute a roadmap for producers to improve knowledge, and their follow-up is ensured within the CNIS. For example, the working group on the Observation of family breakdowns (Ouvrir dans un nouvel ongletThélot, Bourreau-Dubois and Chambaz, 2016), was set up to respond to the dissatisfaction of certain bodies responsible for family policy in relation to the inclusion of the circumstances of children from broken homes in the statistics. The group has produced 30 recommendations for INSEE and the Ministerial Statistical Offices concerned. During the monitoring of its implementation in 2018, the CNIS was able to note the significant progress already made following the report, particularly with the recommendations being taken into account in the questionnaire of the annual census and the INSEE Labour Force Survey, as well as in various studies carried out by DREES, DEPP or INSEE (Ouvrir dans un nouvel ongletBuisson and Raynaud, 2019).

The conferences and seminars organised by the CNIS provide an opportunity to reach a shared diagnosis of major themes and to identify the main issues for statistics. For example, the 2018 conference highlighted the cross-functional issues (national accounts and business or social statistics) of the digital transformation of the economy for statistics, with concrete examples of innovations by producers of official statistics, good practices from foreign statistical institutes, and some private statistics based on a big data approach, all of which constitute a collective incentive to pursue this work in a coordinated manner (Ouvrir dans un nouvel ongletTagnani, 2018). Work can also be more focused, such as the seminar on the 2020 Census, which laid the groundwork for future developments of the questionnaire or its dissemination.

The CNIS’s advisory role is reflected in the opinions and recommendations it issues to producers of statistics, which are intended to be made public in order to bolster their effectiveness. The CNIS has also always held open meetings for its subject-specific committees, in order to enrich its work with all the contributions and to disseminate the information gathered. Although this role is not explicitly assigned to it by law, the CNIS has long practised a policy of complete transparency, which guarantees both the effectiveness of consultation and the quality of the information itself. Today, the transparency provided by the CNIS via its website goes way beyond its own output: not only annual work programmes of the Official Statistical Service and their assessment, description of survey projects or statistical operations submitted to the CNIS for an opinion (see above), but also preparatory files, meeting presentation materials and minutes of CNIS meetings are disseminated online in an organised manner. This transparency also applies, at least in part, to “closed” CNIS meetings, i.e. of the National Population Census Evaluation Committee, the Bureau or the Council (see below for the presentation of these bodies). In the interests of education and accessibility, the CNIS also publishes summaries of meetings and 4-page documents (CNIS “Chronicles”) and has significantly modernised its website in 2017 to better guide users. This allows news on debates to be reported to the public and to keep a record so that everyone can follow the progress of the opinions issued.

The CNIS also comprehensively references all the official statistics surveys deemed to be appropriate and gathers a certain amount of metadata on each of them in a standardised manner, as defined upstream of the operation, as well as the opinion on appropriateness issued by the CNIS and the opinion on compliance from the Official Statistics Quality Label Committee. Recently, it has also been trying to ensure visibility of the requests to access the administrative sources of the Official Statistical Service (see above). Through the information that it provides on all European official statistics projects, the CNIS thus contributes to the principle of transparency of statistics, in accordance with the European Statistics Code of Practice. Moreover, this transparency is not only for the downstream users of statistical data, but also for the stakeholders of the statistical process, notably the people or organisations surveyed, thereby helping to increase their confidence.

Finally, the CNIS reports annually on its activities, in different forms, notably to the French Official Statistics Authority (Autorité de la statistique publique – ASP) (a CNIS activity report is appended to the ASP report, which is very widely distributed).

The quality of the consultation and the determination of statistical needs is based on an efficient and well-established organisation, which is based on the principle of the broadest possible representation and expression of the users of official statistics. This organisation is structured around subject-specific committees, which are meeting places open to all. Their work is analysed and consolidated within the Bureau and approved by the Council as a whole, meeting annually in plenary session (Figure 1).

This pyramidal organisation, which allows for gradual consolidation of the work of the CNIS, ultimately ensures that emerging or debated issues are integrated, from the time they are expressed by users at the broadest level, to their operational translation into official statistics work programmes.

Figure 1. Overview of the Structures within the CNIS and their Role

These seven subject-specific committees, which are open to all and each of which meets twice a year, form the basis for consultation and the determination of needs, based around:

To ensure a balance in the consultation between users and producers of official statistics, each committee is chaired by a person from outside the Official Statistical Service who is an expert on the subject of the committee, assisted by two rapporteurs who are members of the Official Statistical Service and have responsibilities in the field.

The system of subject-specific committees is completed by an eighth specific committee, the National Population Census Evaluation Committee (CNERP), which handles the modes of collection of the population census.

The meetings of the subject-specific committees are structured on the basis of a fairly stable agenda which includes, in addition to the examination of requests for opinions on appropriateness and access to administrative requests under Article 7bis, a central topic which concludes with an opinion from the committee and, depending on current events, one (or more) item(s) of information on the progress of the work of producers which may also, where appropriate, result in an opinion from the Committee.

The main subject is very often split into three stages. The producers of official statistics compile an inventory of the statistics available and the systems based on which they are compiled. Users (associations or administrations) present uses of these data, highlighting desired improvements or any shortcomings. Finally, the researchers’ points of view put these data into perspective and sometimes provide an introduction to the debate. At the end of the debate, an opinion summarises the main terms of the discussions and constitutes a record of requests for improvement.

By way of example, the main subject on the agenda of the Employment committee of 5 November 2020, entitled “Improving knowledge of labour market tensions” had these three components. The inventory was compiled up by the producers on the basis of four interventions: an INSEE/DARES introduction to the statistical sources available for understanding labour market tensions, the new indicators created (DARES), the contribution of the labour needs survey to understanding the tensions (Pôle Emploi) and the link between unemployment and labour shortages (INSEE). The point of view of users was provided by France Stratégie based on a presentation of the “Professions outlook” exercise and by a professional organisation. A researcher completed the approaches and introduced the discussions.

This meeting was attended by 70 participants, 38 of whom were from outside the Official Statistical Service, and they included professional associations and organisations, national administrations, regional administrations, trade union organisations and research bodies.

More generally, the committees each bring together 40 to 100 participants, invited in a targeted manner, from a file of 4,000 contacts. In 2019 and 2020 (in the second half of the year only), the committees were attended by 1,066 participants, 52% of whom were not from the Official Statistical Service. This attendance was not affected by the remote meetings set up due to the health crisis in 2020 (Box 1).

The breakdown of topics of interest, which results from this subject-specific organisation, sometimes needs to be adjusted, in particular to deal with topics falling under two different committees. In such cases, the consultation takes places on an inter-committee basis.

Thus, in April 2017, an inter-committee meeting Public services and services to the public / Environment and sustainable development, after compiling an inventory of the available statistics and their use in the field of health and the environment, highlighted the difficulty of linking environmental data to existing pathologies; this is due, on the one hand, to the lack of data to quantify or characterise the presence and content of certain sources of nuisance or pollution at the appropriate territorial level and, on the other hand, to the difficulty of quantifying the direct impact of environmental factors on the population’s state of health. Similarly, in May 2018, statistical sources on the employment of people with disabilities were discussed in an inter-committee meeting Employment, qualifications and earnings from work / Public services and services to the public.

Some of the subjects addressed during the subject-specific committees also make it possible to extend consultation beyond the committees by creating synergies with other consultation and public debate bodies, in particular the “High Councils”. In order to cover children in official statistics, the Demographics and Social Issues Committee welcomed the President of the High Council for the Family, Childhood and Age in parallel with a presentation of the sources of official statistics on children within this High Council. An opinion was issued by each body, all of which were in favour of a clear and shared definition of the term “child”, in order to facilitate a global approach.

The activity of the thematic committees and, in particular, the opinions issued at the end of each session are examined by the CNIS Bureau, which supplements them with general guidelines highlighting cross-functional expectations for the coming year, thus preparing the deliberations of the Plenary Assembly. Around the President of the CNIS, the Bureau comprises 18 members belonging to the Council and, in particular, the Director General of INSEE, a representative of the Banque de France, a representative of France Stratégie, a representative of each of the trade unions, professional and consular organisations represented within the CNIS, a representative of the local authorities, a representative of the researchers, a representative of the French Insurance Federation and a qualified person.

The Bureau, which meets four times a year, also approves the proposals for working groups made by the committees during their meetings, as well as the subjects for conferences and seminars, and presents and discusses the reports of the working groups.

Finally, at the end of a year of discussion, consultation and determination of needs, all the opinions issued by the committees and the guidelines formulated by the Bureau are validated by the Council meeting in a Plenary Assembly. Renewed in 2019, its 45 members, appointed by ministerial decree for a renewable term of five years, represent a broad cross-section of civil society through the organisations they represent: national and local elected representatives, professional unions, employee unions, associations, public bodies, academics and qualified persons.

The implementation of this organisation is ensured by a Secretariat-General provided by INSEE, which prepares the committees and the work of the Bureau and the Council, supports the working groups, organises conferences and seminars and ensures the application of the guidelines set by the Council in the medium term.

Although the organisation of the CNIS, in terms of its general principle and structures, has changed relatively little over the last few decades, this stability is not synonymous with immobility. Historically, the CNIS has always kept pace with changes to its environment, whether in terms of uses or the general framework for the production of official statistics (Box 2).

Firstly, the central role of ensuring coordination between producers played by the CNIS at its creation has gradually been replaced by consultation with civil society, in line with the increase in coordination and internal collaboration within the Official Statistical Service.

The consultation itself has evolved to be mainly user-oriented, relative to other statistical stakeholders. The control of the survey burden, which generated much debate in the early 2000s, has thus become a secondary concern, as the volume of surveys is no longer increasing. The professional organisations, which were acted as the spokespersons, within the CNIS, for companies, both as surveys’ respondents and as users of official statistics, now more often represent the users’ point of view.

Users themselves have evolved: their expertise in using data has increased, which has led the CNIS to seek to facilitate researchers’ access to micro-data.

Given the growing importance of European demand in statistical programmes, a key feature of the last three decades, the CNIS has decided to regularly inform national users of European projects and, since the introduction of framework regulations for each major field, to provide for the drafting of CNIS opinions sufficiently in advance of the preparation of European operation projects, so that they can be sent to the European authorities.

In view of changes in the ways official statistics are constructed, in particular the growth in the use of administrative data as well as other alternative modes of collection to surveys (private data, web scraping, etc.), the CNIS has extended the scope of its discussions to all statistical information systems, regardless of how they are compiled, so that users have as comprehensive a view as possible. More generally, given the increasing production of data outside the Official Statistical Service (by associations, by platforms, for non-statistical reporting, etc.), these producers may be invited to present their statistics, particularly on areas not covered by Official Statistics, in order to examine ways of making mutual progress. In the same spirit, it was also decided that the CNIS would play a role in the approval of “Statistics of General Interest” from producers outside official statistics (Ouvrir dans un nouvel ongletCNIS, 2020b). Finally, the CNIS could also be called upon to document the use of the new “non-identifying statistical code” by the Official Statistical Service, which will facilitate the matching of sources, and it may eventually issue opinions to provide a framework for good practice in this area.

The CNIS has also positioned itself with regard to the major technological trends, as soon as they involved issues for stakeholders in statistics. The use of administrative data was thus recommended in order to reduce the survey burden on the one hand, and on the other hand to make users benefit from the increased accuracy and the detail that it allows to be disseminated. In its time, the CNIS has also advocated for a switch to online surveys to make data collection faster and more efficient, as well as the general application of online dissemination to facilitate user access to statistical work.

In recent times, marked by the Covid-19 health crisis, the responsiveness of the CNIS’s work has accompanied that of official statistics. In 2020, the CNIS introduced new “virtual” modes of consultation regarding opinions on appropriateness and on certain aspects of the upcoming work programme, notably for the Official Statistical Service’s projects relating to the crisis, without sacrificing the quality of the consultation. These are intended to be made permanent, at least in part (Box 2).

As a cross-functional body for all statistical fields and all types of users, the CNIS ensures that users are well informed and enables them to express their needs upstream or to react to statistical projects. It is the legitimate and permanent interface of transparent consultation at all levels throughout Official Statistics, between the producers and users of statistics. As a place for transparent debate on specific subjects as well as on general statistical orientations, it allows official statistics to ensure the relevance of its productions. It thus contributes to increasing confidence in statistics and their social acceptability. CNIS debates also have educational value and sometimes even moderate public debate on “sensitive” issues such as employment, inequality, discrimination, etc.

As the statistical information system has broadly reached maturity, today the CNIS’s activity is not so much about exploring fresh topics, but about striving to develop new production methods, streamlining them or ensuring better links between existing sources.

In the future, the CNIS would like to be able to give more visibility to statistics based on administrative data, in order to increase their transparency to the same level as sources based on surveys, particularly with regard to the use of personal data. It should eventually also be in a position to offer as comprehensive a view as possible of all the data sources of the Official Statistical System, by mapping the information systems. Finally, in order to improve consultation in the years to come, the CNIS will have to work effectively with feedback from an increasing number of users, collected directly by producers or disseminating bodies or by other compilers of Official Statistics (the Statistical Confidentiality Committee for researchers, for example), in order to take such feedback into account in its work.

Ouvrir dans un nouvel ongletDécret n°2009-318 du 20 mars 2009 relatif au Conseil national de l’information statistique, au comité du secret statistique et au comité du label de la statistique publique. In: site de Légifrance. [online]. Mise à jour du 2 janvier 2021. [Accessed 26 May 2021].

Ouvrir dans un nouvel ongletLoi n°51-711 du 7 juin 1951 sur l’Obligation, la coordination et le secret en matière de statistiques. In: site de Légifrance. [online]. Mise à jour du 25 mars 2019. [Accessed 26 May 2021].

Ouvrir dans un nouvel ongletLoi n°2008-776 du 4 août 2008 de Modernisation de l’économie. In: site de Légifrance. [online]. Mise à jour du 5 juillet 2019. [Accessed 26 May 2021].