Romanian Official Statistical Approach and Practice to Quality Assurance Framework
Vergil Voineagu, Ilie Dumitrescu, Daniela Stefanescu, Gabriela Popa
National Institute of Statistics, Bucharest, Romania

The approach of National Statistical Institute of Romania (NIS) is oriented towards implementation of the EFQM model.

The implementation of a quality management system within NIS is a long-term commitment. It requires a change in the organisation's culture, supported by a new vision, based on a set of core values shared by all staff, such as: leadership, user orientation, process-orientation and teamwork.

The process of identifying strengths and weaknesses and setting priorities is very important for many phases of the quality management implementation.

In the context of strategic planning, it is particularly useful for setting priorities and identifying areas for action.

Due to the current crisis, the issues raised for Romanian official statistics have taken a new dimension, which stands before us a very delicate issue. Special attention we paid to the macroeconomic indicators; as happened in other countries, they can lead to things which can therefore become irreparable, can cause difficulties both at the governmental level, in decision, as well as at statistical level.

The problem becomes acute for us when dealing with expectations of the statistics - the qualitative assessment of activity - and with users' expectations, especially governmental users who are “with eyes” on our statistics. Our concerns at statistical level must move towards a coherent view of the quality criteria, reliability but specially timeliness and cooperation between the official real economy statistics and financial statistics.

When we assess the quality criteria' implementation, there is not a practical system of monitoring and information that goes beyond statistics.

We, the authors, taking into account the circumstances presented above and the new demands of the society, particulary the of the main users (government, mass media), have tried to develop an approach to the way of coverage and implementation, especially monitoring the quality criteria, under current conditions.

Biography: Mr. Ilie Dumitrescu is Director, Counsellor at the Presidents' Cabinet. He has more than 40 years experience in the official statistics. Member of the ISI and other national and international statistical bodies. Active in the co-ordination and implementation of the Total Quality Management within the National Institute of Statistics Romania. Participant in the Quality Conferences and providing assistance in this field for other countries. Author of many articles and publications.