Authority and knowledge in fragmented data governance systems: the changing role of national statistical organisations

Society has witnessed exponential growth in digital data flows since the arrival of the Internet, while technologies have become more sophisticated in turning data into public information and services (Coudin, Poulhes & Castillo, 2021). The challenge of data becoming such a critical governance resource is that it is frequently weaponised through cyberwarfare, surveillance and disinformation campaigns, often with huge economic and political effects (Auerbach, 2023). Throughout these developments, national statistical organisations (NSOs) have been struggling to maintain their critical role in national and international data ecosystems (Boräng et al., 2018). Traditionally, NSOs have played a primary role for states in the production of data, and they now occupy a difficult role in government, carrying out a central function but facing pressures to reform so that they can continue being stewards of democracy while offering value to economic and political capacity (Anderson & Whitford, 2018; Di Gennaro, 2024). This paper examines this changing role of national statistics agencies and illustrates how they have adapted to challenges of the information society, focusing particularly on the role of expert- and information-driven authority in contemporary collaborative governance arrangements where information, data and decision-making structures are dispersed (Anderson & Whitford, 2018). It poses the following question: in what ways have nation states' and international organisations' tools for controlling information evolved and with what consequences for democracy? Empirically, the paper focuses on documentary analysis of and participatory research with several national and international statistical policy organisations and zooms in on developments in the Dutch NSO, Statistics Netherlands in particular. The results of the paper show that NSOs are evolving from information producers to data agencies that are more active in the ecosystem of data production and have increasingly more responsibility for turning data into public value. This has also resulted in consequences for the knowledge authority of nation states and international organisations in data governance ecosystems though differences are observed in models of central government-NSO decision making. These findings are presented together with recommendations for policymakers and examples from around the world of innovative NSO governance arrangements. References: Anderson, D. M., & Whitford, A. (2018). Designing systems for the co-production of public knowledge: considerations for national statistical systems. Policy Design and Practice, 1(1), 79-89. Auerbach, J. (2023). Safeguarding facts in an era of disinformation: The case for independently monitoring the US statistical system. Harvard Data Science Review, 5(3), 10. Boräng, F., Cornell, A., Grimes, M., & Schuster, C. (2018). Cooking the books: Bureaucratic politicization and policy knowledge. Governance, 31(1), 7-26. Coudin, E., Poulhes, M., & Castillo, M. S. (2021). The French official statistics strategy: Combining signaling data from various mobile network operators for documenting COVID-19 crisis effects on population movements and economic outlook. Data & Policy, 3, e10. Di Gennaro, L. (2024). Is there a quantitative relationship between democracy and official statistics?. Statistical Journal of the IAOS, 40(3), 511-519.