Abstract

In 1967, following the controversies surrounding her report on the Eichmann trial, Hannah Arendt summarised her views in an essay ('Truth and Politics', The New Yorker) in which she addresses the relationship between factual truth and politics. In it, she argues that factual truth“is political by nature. Facts and opinions, though they must
be kept apart, are not antagonistic to each other; they belong to the same
realm. …
Seen from the viewpoint of politics, truth has a despotic character. It is
therefore hated by tyrants, who rightly fear the competition of a coercive
force they cannot monopolize, and it enjoys a rather precarious status in the
eyes of governments that rest on consent and abhor coercion.
To look upon politics from the perspective of truth, … , means to take one’s
stand outside the political realm.”

Conclusions were drawn from the terrible experiences of the dictatorships of the 20th century: the Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, the ISI Declaration on Professional Ethics in 1985, the UN Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics in 1994. The ethical principles in statistics, which have been attributed universal significance, are concerned with the rights and interests of citizens and with the quality of statistics for the common good: privacy (the right of a person to privacy), freedom of information (the right of a person to open and transparent information) and statistics (the right of a person to have access to and be a stakeholder in the provision of good quality statistical information intended to steer and govern a society). Statistics is a result of the Enlightenment as much as the nation state and is closely tied to it (in both good and bad periods). Not least as a result of digitalisation and globalisation, these statistical principles require continuous practical application and interpretation, and, to a limited extent, adaptation to new data sources, circumstances and methods. With the Sustainable Development Agenda, a global strategy has been adopted for the individual goals and overall success of which reliable, verified facts are of decisive importance. In this global effort, common ethics for the statistical profession, good governance rules for statistical institutions and support for their independence, strength and innovativeness are critical. The policy objective should be to create a strong data culture in which value creation on the part of statistics producers and value appreciation on the part of users are mutually supportive and reinforcing.