Central Statistics Office: Their business is the hard facts
Less than a mile from where thousands of shoppers sift through the sales at Mahon Point Shopping Centre on the outskirts of Cork City, hundreds of workers crunch the numbers on what they are buying, how they are earning it, where they live, and everything in between.
Welcome to the national headquarters of the Central Statistics Office, a complex that opened in 1994, long before the shopping centre, retail park and office developments sprung up in the fields surrounding it.
The CSO has 883 staff; 309 work out of Dublin, including those hired for the census, the findings of which are due to be released in March.
Household and tourism surveys are carried out across the country by 105 field staff, who then feed the results to statisticians, some of whom are among the 469 staff at the Cork headquarters, in Mahon.
The information is then processed with data from a host of industry and State sources to produce statistics on topics across society, business, the labour market, the environment, and the economy.
These statistics are released in formats that suit the needs of their various users.
In-house, the CSO refer to these demographics as “tourists”, “farmers”, and “miners” — data-management terms that hint at the needs of each.
The tourists are the members of the public who dip into the headline stats — who look up the CSO website to see what baby names are popular, or to learn the population of their hometown, for example. For these users, infographics and other visual means of relaying data are created for ease of access.
The farmers want more depth, and tend to be journalists, or researchers who compile reports. The CSO issues releases and reports to these users, and the interactive databank allows them to create their own tables to extract the exact data they need.
The miners are the most intensive users: They are PhD researchers, and others who require deeper access to the CSO’s vast depth of data. Often, these users will come to the offices to access material.
Eoin MacCuirc is head of Databank and Dissemination. The CSO’s databank has 3,000 tables that can be adjusted to the needs of each user.
“Publishing Irish public sector information in open, free, and reusable formats is an important driver for promoting innovation and transparency in Ireland,” he says.
“CSO is at the forefront of local, national, and international developments in open data and is proud to contribute nearly 3,000 datasets to the Irish open data portal, data.gov.ie. This portal is fast-becoming the place to find out what makes Ireland tick.”
The tourists dominate the CSO’s web traffic. The most popular baby names in 2015 and 2014 were the second- and third-most-popular releases on the CSO’s website in 2016, and population and migration estimates were the most popular.
Users were also curious about house prices in their area, and how their area compared to others. The CSO’s most popular interactive was the property price tool, which allowed people to break down house prices by Eircode areas.
A tool that allowed users to see how many other Irish people share their birthday has also drawn a lot of traffic.
The CSO site also hosts the publications it produces, and the preliminary census findings were the most popular of these, while a special release, comparing modern Ireland to life in 1916, also proved a winner with users.
While the figures produced by the CSO are sometimes cited during debates on topics such as rising unemployment or inflation, the organisation was at the centre of controversy earlier this year.
“Leprechaun economics” — a phrase coined by economist, Paul Krugman, when the CSO revealed that the Irish economy grew by a staggering 26% in 2015 — is a term that clearly rankles with those within the organisation.
It is now understood what caused the massive growth figures: Because of the abolition of the “double Irish” tax loophole, multinationals relocated their intellectual property from offshore islands to their Irish headquarters, boosting the balance sheets of the companies domiciled here.
However, Krugman queried why these figures are used in calculating Ireland’s gross domestic product. As those responsible for the calculation, the CSO has taken criticism, but diplomatically insists it was following international standards.
“Of course this was a challenge,” says Elaine O’Mahoney, head of communications at the CSO.
“But the important point is that the figures are correct. Reporting of GDP is a requirement under EU law and must be compiled strictly, in accordance with international rules. The data published were verified by Eurostat and based on hard data, and attributable to the globalisation activities of a very small number of companies.”
With the CSO’s output playing such a prominent role in the formation of public policy, what safeguards ensure the information it provides is accurate?
“We would have a whole host of quality metrics around the data that we use. We produce data in line with very strict methodologies,” says Aeidín Sheppard, communications manager with the CSO.
“A lot of what we produce, particularly the Eurostat stuff, is produced in line with international standards, so the UNECE (United Nations Economic Commission for Europe), EuroStat, all of the national statistics institutes around the world, have agreed methodologies and standards where they say ‘this is how you collate the data, this is how you aggregate it’.
“The processes we use would be international standard and agreed protocols on how you handle your data, from collection point to dissemination point.
“We would also be peer reviewed by the European Statistical System Committee.
“The code of practice is in place to say how to do things properly, and periodically we would have a group of people come from the other international organisations, who go through a root-and-branch audit of what we do and how we do it.”
As for the future, as the demands facing society change, so, too, does the CSO’s output. The organisation tailors the way it disseminates data to meet the needs of the time.
“We recently launched a Brexit report and we will shortly launch an electronic version, which will contain the tables in this report, along with other, more detailed information,” says Ms O’Mahoney.
“It is also planned to publish, on the CSO website, in early 2017, a dedicated page, which will track indicators on our relationship with the UK.
“This page will be similar to the page on the CSO website, ‘Key Economic Indicators’, and will be created using data in the CSO databank, and thus will always be up to date,” she says.
Next year, of course, the census results will be released. Mr MacCuirc says how the CSO will relay this information is one of the many projects in the pipeline.
The organisation will team up with Ordinance Survey Ireland and the All-Island Research Observatory to create new ways of relaying the census findings to the public.
“CSO infographics, interactive tools, charts, and maps have become a regular feature of recent CSO releases and publications, turning data into insight,” he says.
