Abstract

"Trust in institutions" and "the rights of citizens to public information" are among the key themes of the Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics. Achieving these goals depends on two critical factors: (i) ensuring transparency in the legislation, rules, and measures governing the statistical system's operation, and (ii) establishing an efficient coordination mechanism within the National Statistical Systems (NSSs), which are responsible for producing official statistics through the National Statistical Offices (NSOs) and other public institutions. The COVID-19 pandemic posed significant challenges to NSSs as they had to adjust their data governance to meet the data demands while compensating for limited field survey implementation. This situation highlighted the need for appropriate statistical laws and coordination within the NSSs to develop and implement responses to such crises. From this end, this paper focuses on the efforts of the Statistical, Economic and Social Research and Training Centre for Islamic Countries (SESRIC), a subsidiary organ of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), concerning two major strategic and managerial issues of official statistics: modernizing statistical legislation and ensuring efficient coordination within NSSs. These efforts have the potential to foster a data culture within an official statistical setting.