Author: Sofie De Broe, Olav ten Bosch, Piet Daas, Gert Buiten, Ben Laevens, Bert Kroese Publication date: 01/04/2021 08:00

The need for timely official statistics

Introduction

This paper discusses how Statistics Netherlands managed to respond quickly with a range of new outputs to the sudden increase in the need for statistical information following the outbreak of the covid-19 pandemic. It describes the innovation process already in place, as well as the innovations in response to the pandemic. This is followed by a discussion of what made speedy innovation and implementation possible, after which lessons are drawn in order to maintain the ability to react quickly to future policy questions. One important success factor is the combination of new data sources with already existing statistics for calibration.