Building ethical guidelines to produce official statistics: the statistical ethics system (SETE) for the national administrative department of statistics (DANE) in Colombia

ABSTRACT

This article describes and analyzes the design and functioning of the Statistical Ethics System (SETE) in Colombia’s National Statistical Office. It presents the methodology and general process of planning and implementation of the System, supported by a conceptual analysis of the requirements for an ethical functioning of official statistics. The general objective of the article is to make a practical contribution to the understanding of conceptual and practical features that ought to be considered in the implementation of an ethical system in the operation of the public sector, particularly in the area of the production of official statistics. The text is divided into five parts. In the first part, we make a general introduction to the ethical value of official statistics. In the second and third parts, we make a presentation and analysis of the principles and risks that were selected as the basic ethical framework for the production of official statistics at the National Administrative Department of Statistics (DANE). The fourth section presents the conceptual and practical bases of how SETE operates. The fifth section we present some concluding remarks.

KEYWORDS:

• Ethics
• official statistics
• risk assessment
• ethics committee

Notes

1 For more information: unstats.un.org.

2 National Statistician’s Data Ethics Advisory Committee. Available information in: https://uksa.statisticsauthority.gov.uk/the-authority-board/committees/national-statisticians-advisory-committees-and-panels/national-statisticians-data-ethics-advisory-committee/

Data Ethics Advisory Group in New Zealand, Available information in: https://data.govt.nz/leadership/advisory-governance/data-ethics-advisory-group/

3 Such as the American Statistical Association, the International Statistical Institute, United Nations, and the Royal Statistical Society

4 This includes DataEthics, the Open Data Institute, Accenture, and Deloitte.

5 Mathematical, logistic, economic, or otherwise.

6 Cf. Weapons of Math Destruction (O’Neil 2016 chapter 1). Although the author deals mainly with mathematical models, these features apply to any kind of model, broadly understood as an abstract representation of a process that enables us to make predictions, descriptions, prescriptions, or analysis.

7 The documents are available at https://www.sen.gov.co/conozca-el-sen/instancias/sete. It is worth noting that by the time this article was written, SETE’s Master Document was going through revision – which should take place every two years, approximately.

8 For example, the layman’s guide to the functioning of SETE (available at Sistema de #Ética Estadística del DANE (SETE) – YouTube) or more specialized content as webinars (e.g. La ética en la producción de información estadística: baluarte de la democracia – YouTube).

9 Although the concept of risk refers, more generally, to decisions under known probabilities, here we will use ‘risk’ in the narrower sense of probable unwanted outcomes.

10 The members of the Chamber of Appeals are invited to this presentation so that they have the necessary information in case an appeal takes place. The memoirs of the different discussions at the Committee are kept also to serve as a basis for the eventual work of the Chamber.