With this latest edition, the Courrier des statistiques releases its eighth issue. The review once again aims to address some major issues faced by official statistics, using an educationally-oriented tone.

Statisticians, whether beginners or experts, as well as citizens interested in the "manufacture of data", will again find a wide range of articles allowing them to better understand this universe and demonstrating the desire among Official Statistical Services to innovate to fulfil their mission. The review’s papers are carefully written by authors who describe our collective ability to adapt not only in relation to methods and tools, but also in relation to institutional or legal issues. Standing as a testament to the work carried out in the sphere of official statistics, the review remains attentive to external practices, both in France and abroad, to place them in their context to feed into our thinking and, ultimately, to establish our research on solid foundations.

Five of the seven papers in this eighth issue are devoted to the universe of registers. Astonishingly, until this issue, the Courrier des statistiques had never been so laser-focused on their properties, on their building process and on the way to keep them alive. Yet they sit firmly in the gravity centre of many of the information systems developed by statisticians. They also assume multiple roles as a central, or even mandatory, reference point in management processes, administrative ones in particular. They are aimed at both individual and institutional users who sometimes have divergent interests, but who are nevertheless always in lockstep regarding their demands for registers to provide a high level of service blending quality of content and interoperability.

While the decision was made to devote a large place to registers and repositories, this eighth issue of the Courrier opens with pieces not only on the universe of statistics dedicated to local authorities, but also on the TeO survey, which, in a unique manner, explores how the origins of immigrants or children of immigrants influence their trajectories and living conditions.

The review therefore opens with the second edition of the TeO (trajectories and origins) survey. Willy Thao Khamsing dissects this operation carried out jointly by INSEE and INED in 2008–2009 and reissued in 2019–2020. The reissue of the TeO survey goes much further than a simple update, since many innovations have been introduced in the design, protocol and methodology of the survey.
INSEE and the Ministerial Statistical Offices (MSOs) are responsible for producing statistics aimed at measuring diversity, based on objective and reliable data relating to the situation of immigrants and the children of immigrants, as well as their background. In a context in which the topics of immigration and the diversity of the French population are at the heart of public debate, objectivising these elements remains essential.
The author plunges us into the heart of the survey and precisely describes the custom methods used to create the samples and make adjustments for non-response.

The second paper provides a 360-degree analysis of the MSO for local authorities. The author, Luc Brière, head of this MSO, analyses this complete and centralised statistical system dedicated to communities. Initially responding mainly to monitoring needs in terms of demographics, community finances or inter-municipal structures, this system has gradually evolved in order to respond to requests for more precise knowledge. The data produced are part of complex processes for the production, validation and enrichment of mainly administrative sources.

Registers are in the spotlight in the next five papers. Pascal Rivière starts things off with a general and well-documented paper. He defines registers, these "repositories that are essential and yet little understood", as a recognised source of information, containing master data into which users can tap. He details the five fundamental properties (centrality, quality, stability, unity of meaning and interoperability) that characterise them while also stressing the dynamic aspect of registers and highlighting the information system that revolves around them. These different concepts can be found, to varying degrees, in the following papers.

The following two papers take us into the intertwined constellations of the National Register for the Identification of Individuals (Répertoire national d’identification des personnes physiques – RNIPP) and the National Identification Management System (Système national de gestion des identifiants – SNGI).

To begin with, Lionel Espinasse and Valérie Roux present the RNIPP, a crucial register managed by INSEE, which contains the civil status of all people born in France or having lived in France. At the time of registration in the register, everyone is assigned an identification number (the NIR), more commonly referred to, incorrectly, as the "social security number". Managed by INSEE, the RNIPP’s data come from civil status documents sent by the municipal authorities for people born in France and by the National Old Age Insurance Fund (Caisse nationale d’assurance vieillesse – CNAV) for people born outside France. Paired with the SNGI managed by CNAV, it is a centrepiece of the French social security system. Access to personal information contained in the RNIPP is strictly controlled through regulations. It is used mainly to certify civil statuses or to verify whether people are living or deceased. The RNIPP is also a pivotal register that is used for other registers such as the SIRENE or the Single Electoral Register. Initially confined to the social sphere, the RNIPP plays a structural role in the French administrative system. In recent years, it has logged almost 30 million identification requests per year. More recently, the arrival of FranceConnect has further increased its uses and its standards in terms of quality and availability.

The SNGI is the repository of identities, to be used by social security agencies. Created in 1988 by CNAV, it handles the civil statuses and NIRs of social security beneficiaries. Over time, it has established itself as a base repository, in particular because it makes it possible to allocate NIRs to people born outside France. Created using the files of people under the CNAV general old-age pension plan, it has gradually been synchronised with INSEE's RNIPP.
In his paper, Joseph Préveraud de Vaumas describes its continuous development, as well as its consulting and identity search functions.

With the following paper, we leave the realm of individuals to take an interest in companies. With Ali Hachid and Marie Leclair, we go on a journey through the SIRUS constellation, an essential tool for business statisticians who must be able to rely on a register to establish their sampling frame and to compare their survey data or administrative data with reference values. In France, the business statistical system is based on the SIRENE register. The latter, which was designed for administrative needs and is managed by INSEE, has needed to reconcile responses to contradictory needs over time, adding to the burden of management. This is why, ten years ago, INSEE chose to develop a statistical business register, SIRUS. Linked to SIRENE to make use of its freshness, as well as developing new concepts that are of use to statisticians (enterprise in the economic sense, cessation of economic activity etc.), SIRUS provides a common reference point for business statistics.

Last but not least, Xavier Helfenstein's paper introduces us to a unique feature of the French statistical system, with an analysis of the Permanent Equipment Database that identifies and geolocates equipment, services and infrastructure accessible to the population throughout the country each year. Heir to the municipal inventory that it has replaced, the formation of this database is now based on the collection of rich, mainly administrative, sources that are much easier to produce and update. While its production process is simple, the multitude of sources it incorporates and their heterogeneity require continuous adaptation of processing. Its overhaul, which is currently underway, is based on an ambitious quality approach, the main objective of which is to streamline work and better consider user requests. Finally, managing a comprehensive metadata system to facilitate exchanges with data producers and users is one new feature expected.