Foundations of Ethics in Statistics in the Light of the ISI Declaration on Statistical Ethics and the UN Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics
1. Every information activity is based on the information users’ trust in the sources of information and on the presumption of professional reliability of the information producer and disseminator. It is so because the user of infor mation has no means to verify its quality. Thus, in many areas of the informa tion activity, codes of professional ethics are functioning. Statistics are one of such areas. In 1985, at the session of the International Institute of Statistics (ISI) in Amsterdam, the declaration called in the statistician circles iiCode of Statistical Ethicsli was adopted. In 1992, the UN ECE adopted in the form of resolution the Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics called – because of the number of 10 rules – The Statistical Decalog. In the paper, the fun damental ethical principles are discussed that, in the light of the above-men tioned documents, are to be observed by the persons and institutions involved in statistical survey or being users of statistical data.
2. The paper also takes into consideration the results of the proceedings of the special ISI committee on the code of statistical ethics that is presently working on a new version of this document. The amended version takes into account the ethical implications of modern information technologies for statistical sur veys. Such implications, including the threat to the information quality and statistical confidentiality and the danger of misinformation, arise from the development of information and telecommunications technologies, the ever broader use of the so-called formula driven policy (direct linkage of social and economic instruments with the value of statistical indicators) and the techni cally easy access to the conduct of statistical surveys by insufficiently methodi cally prepared teams.
3. The author suggests the need to include the ethical principles set down in the document of the International Institute of Statistics and the UN into the high-school and university programs of statistics. Also, these principles are to be observed in planning and carrying out statistical surveys as well as in the quality management in statistics.
