Abstract

Fourth Industrial Era is describes as exponential growth of several key technological fields’ concepts, such as intelligent materials, cloud computing, cyber-physical systems, data exchange, the Internet of things, blockchain technology and Artificial Intelligent. At its core, data represents a post-industrial opportunity for official statisticians. Data science has emerged as a very strong, visible, and publicly recognized label for problem-solving, using large, ever-growing datasets and new data sources. The analysis and interpretation of these kinds of data include the adaptation of existing methods, and development of novel statistical methods for specific data science applications. The discussion on advantages, disadvantages, limitations and requirements of the use of alternative methodologies and data sources, in all areas of knowledge is setting the stage for the debate in (inter)national communities of statisticians, computer scientists and other communities, all over the world. Official statisticians need to look into the future and see how official statistics can be obtained in the fourth industrial era. Hence, this panel discussion attempts: (i) To enlighten official statisticians on how to incorporate data science into official statistics. (ii) To emphasize the importance of data science in the activities of official statistics. (iii) To foster capacity building on data science, including computational skills among official statisticians, and statistical offices, and (iv) To build a network of data science and official statistics in various national statistical offices. In this panel discussion, we aim to discuss the link between the fourth industrial era and data science; where official statistics find partners for Analytics in data science; challenges and opportunities for the official statistics in data Science; data science capacity building for official statistics; and what the future of official statistics is in data science era.