Geert Somers appointed as expert on data use for official statistics

The Expert Group was set up by Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union. It brings together independent experts from various disciplines to discuss the framework that would ensure effective and sustainable access to data collected and held in the private sector for producing official statistics, also in the light of the new emerging roles of national statistical institutes (NSI) in the data-driven society and economy.

Geert was granted this position because of his extensive experience with the use of big data by NSI. Especially in an age of big tech and the need for accurate facts and information, the role of NSI and trustworthy official statistics becomes even more important than ever before. NSI need to be able to keep fulfilling their role as an impartial, credible provider of reliable statistical information of high quality and methodological soundness. This way they can keep helping governments and other stakeholders such as international agencies or the private sector, to take informed, evidence-based decisions for the sustainable future of our society, economy and environment. And this use of statistics should help to make governments and other stakeholders more efficient and accountable for their acts.

As member of the Expert Group, Geert will have to debate issues such as the transfer of data from private parties to NSI, protections for private parties giving access to their data, anonymisation versus pseudonymisation of data, secondary use of personal data for statistics and balanced contractual licenses for the use of data.