A four-member expert team will conduct a peer review of Statistics Estonia
This week, 6–10 September 2021, external experts will be visiting the Tallinn office of Statistics Estonia. The experts will evaluate the production of official statistics in Estonia against the quality requirements of Eurostat (the statistical office of the European Union) and against the European Statistics Code of Practice.
The team of experts include Jørgen Elmeskov, Director-General of Statistics Denmark; Hana Slegrova, educator and long-term department head at the Czech Statistical Office; Daniela Stefanescu, Director of European Affairs and International Cooperation of the Romanian national statistical institute; and František Bernadič, director of Macroeconomic statistics at Eurostat. In addition, Claudia Junker will participate as a Eurostat observer.
Mr Jørgen Elmeskov, with a background in economics, has worked in a number of increasingly senior positions, internationally and in his home country, Denmark.
For the past 7 years, Mr Elmeskov has been Director-General of Statistics Denmark and, hence, participated in the work of the European Statistical System, including first as member and then as chair of the Partnership Group of the European Statistical System Committee. He therefore has first-hand knowledge of the ESS peer review process, having been involved in the preparations for and then welcomed the previous peer review at Statistics Denmark, and having subsequently worked to ensure implementation of the recommendations given.
At the same time, Mr Elmeskov has strategic knowledge of the aims of the process at the level of the ESS. Throughout his career, he has frequently participated in various reviews, often conducted in small teams, and thus has great familiarity with the nature of the process.
Ms Hana Slegrova has 29 years (1987–2016) of working experience in the Federal and the Czech Statistical Offices (CzSO), mostly as director of methodology and director of the international co-operation departments. She is actively participating in quality and training activities. She was a member of the Task Force for the preparation of the regulation on European statistics (2006–2007) and the chair of the Council Working Party on statistics during the Czech Presidency (2009).
Ms Slegrova was involved in the evaluation activities related to the European Statistics Code of Practice, as member of a peer review team in the 1st round (2007), as national coordinator in the 2nd round (2015) and as member of expert teams for light peer reviews in candidate countries (2010-11).
Ms Slegrova has more than 10 years of experience in teaching economic statistics at the Charles University in Prague. She is currently involved in a project aiming at improving the quality of management and functioning of the CzSO and in training for a special part of the civil service examination in statistics (ESS, European Statistics).
Mr František Bernadič has an engineer diploma from the University of Economics, Faculty of management, Bratislava. He has a long experience of working in official statistics, having held various positions over the last 30 years. Mr Bernadič was researcher at Infostat from 1981 to 1994 and from 1996 to 2004, and research team leader at Infostat from 2004 to 2007.
Mr Bernadič worked as expert on science and technology statistics from 1995-1996, was project leader for the Statistical Office of Austria in 2004. He joined the Statistical Office of Slovakia first as Director of Macroeconomics Statistics from 2006 to 2016 and then as Vice-President from 2016 to 2019. Since 2020, Mr Bernadič is Director of Macroeconomic statistics at Eurostat.
Ms Daniela Stefanescu graduated from the Faculty of Cybernetics, Statistics and Economic Informatics from the Academy of Economic Studies, Bucharest Romania and has a PhD in Economic and Social Statistics. She has 30 years of experience as a statistician working in official statistics, reaching the highest position in her career during 2001–2003 when she was the vice-president of the Romanian INS. At present, she is director of European Affairs and International Cooperation, specialised in the field of statistical capacity building, international relations, quality management in statistics, European affaires matters. She coordinated the process of integration of Romanian statistics into the European Statistical System and was the co-chair of the “Statistics” working group during the Romanian Presidency of the EU Council.
Mrs Stefanescu was involved in different technical assistance projects. She was in charge of the global assessment of the Ukrainian statistical system as international expert; she analysed the compliance of Moldavian statistics against the European Statistics Code of Practice principles; she worked as medium term TAIEX expert to set up the legislative framework for the statistical bureau of Northern Cyprus. She also conducted several missions in Serbia, Kosovo, Bosnia and Herzegovina as expert on dissemination matters and as UN observer for the Population and Housing Census.
Ms Claudia Junker, head of the Eurostat Task Force “Peer reviews and quality”, will participate in the peer review visit of Statistics Estonia as an observer. Her role is to participate in all the meetings conducted during the peer review visit and to observe them, with the aim to enhance harmonisation of the approach taken by the different peer review expert team to the peer reviews across the European Statistics System. She will also collect suggestions for improving/fine-tuning the approach and support the expert team in harmonising the outcome of the peer reviews, namely the recommendations for improvement.
Ms Junker has been working in Eurostat since 1999 in different units, including statistical cooperation, business statistics, quality and evaluation, and from 2010 onwards as head of unit for “Statistical cooperation” and for “Government finance statistics and quality”. Before joining Eurostat she worked in the German statistical office in the areas of national accounts and statistical cooperation.
See also the news article on peer reviews.