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STATISTICAL INFRASTRUCTURE

During the NASR consultation, stakeholders raised concerns not only with the quality of agricultural statistics, but also with the quality of the underpinning statistical infrastructure. Statistical infrastructure refers to the physical systems, methods and processes used in statistical production and to conceptual tools such as classifications, standards and frameworks. These assist in ensuring that statistics are produced to the highest quality standards and are able to be integrated, related and compared with other statistics.

Stakeholders reported that currently there is a wide variety of methods, systems and techniques used to collect, analyse and disseminate statistical data across the statistical system. These methods and tools are not widely shared and this is leading to duplication of effort as organisations develop their own methods in a siloed manner. An example raised by stakeholders was the issue of multiple organisations, particularly within government, investing in the development of separate electronic data collection platforms when joint investment in a single platform could provide a more efficient solution. An inability to access systems and tools for the analysis and dissemination of statistical data was also cited as an issue, particularly systems and processes for integrating data from multiple sources to present a more complete picture of the economic, social and environmental dimensions of agriculture.

A consistent theme raised by stakeholders was the impact of the use of non-standard methods and processes on the comparability and coherence of statistics across the system, and the lack of agreed ‘best practice’ methods and standards that affect the quality of the statistics produced. For example, the use of different frames and registers (i.e. lists of businesses or households) by organisations undertaking statistical collections makes it difficult to compare the resulting statistics. Stakeholders noted the difficulties in relating data from industry surveys, which are based on levy payer lists, to ABS data, which are based on the Australian Business Register (ABR), as the different numbers and types of businesses included in the two frame sources affects their comparability.

The lack of a standard definition of an ‘agricultural business’ was also noted as a critical issue for stakeholders, given that the number of agricultural businesses is key to understanding the state of the industry. The varying definitions in use across statistical collections are a cause for concern, as these definitions affect estimates of fundamental statistics such as the value and volume of production.

Issues with the current standard geographic classification for official agricultural statistics, the Australian Statistical Geography Standard (ASGS), were also raised. These included its limitations for presenting land-based statistics and the inability to provide a sufficiently fine level of spatial disaggregation to support analysis of regional trends.

Statistical infrastructure also refers to the people working within the agricultural statistics system and their level of statistical literacy and capability. Stakeholders noted issues with the depth of statistical literacy among both producers and users of statistics in the current system, and reported difficulties in finding and accessing educational resources that would improve this. In particular, they reported frustration at a lack of educational resources targeted to non-technical users of statistics.