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NATIONAL STATISTICAL SERVICE LEADERSHIP

OBJECTIVES

The National Statistical Service (NSS) Leadership program provides a focus within the ABS for strategies aimed at strengthening and extending the NSS, which is the community of government agencies working together to build a rich statistical picture for a better informed Australia. Consistent with the ABS’s legislated responsibilities as Australia’s central statistical authority, the NSS Leadership program identifies opportunities for the ABS to partner with other organisations to improve the quality and value of their data and to embed awareness of statistical information as a strategic and enabling asset. Targeted outcomes of the NSS Leadership program are:

• optimising and improving Australia’s essential statistical assets for evidence-based policy development, evaluation and research
• improved statistical infrastructure and services
• increased statistical capability of producers and users of statistics.

• release of Phase 2 of the Essential Statistical Assets (ESA) for Australia initiative which provides quality assessments for each of the 74 essential statistics on the 2013 ESA list
• development of Phase 3 of ESA, producing a list of essential statistical infrastructure for the national statistical system
• progression of the Crisp revisited project and National Statistics Policy to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the national statistical system
• participation in and promotion of initiatives to improve the use of official statistics, for example, data.gov.au, GovHack and coordination of the NSS Seminar Series
• support of the external statistical governance forums to advance NSS priorities and the use of statistical information:
  • Australian Statistics Advisory Council
  • State Statistical Forum
  • Australian Government Statistical Forum
• strategic engagement with stakeholders to advance statistical information access and sharing across government agencies
• supporting and coordinating resources to help official statisticians, including statistical literacy resources hosted on the Understanding Statistics web page, a national external statistical training program and a Data Quality Online Tool to enable data providers and users to better communicate and understand data quality.

• the transformation of information management infrastructure to establish an environment in which Australian governments and the community can easily find, access, and combine statistical information
• unlocking the potential of key administrative data holdings held by governments for statistical data integration and research, and enhancing the official statistics evidence base for decision-making purposes
• progressing, in a highly consultative way, the Essential Statistical Assets (ESA) for Australia initiative to protect and prioritise government investment in official statistics
• enabling statistical information to be integrated with location information
• enhancing the level of statistical capability across government agencies to support improved use of statistical information in policy formulation and evaluation
• continuing to build support for the Integrated Statistical Capability Development Framework across the NSS, providing customised training, both national and international including eLearning options and blended learning initiatives.

• strategically position external statistical governance fora to focus on NSS priority areas and provide opportunity for engagement on key policy issues - ongoing
• enhancing strategic engagement to strengthen relationships between key official data producers and policy makers to invest and value high quality statistics and statistical capability as strategic assets - ongoing
• contributing to whole of government open data initiatives, for example, through support of and collaboration with data.gov.au - ongoing.