Good stats require good data
EDITORIAL: WHAT OTHERS THINK
Achief statistician who does not direct his own data processing department cannot be sure the reports he issues are accurate. Wayne Smith, Canada’s chief statistician, tried to make that simple point to his masters in the Liberal government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau — but they didn’t get it. They required him to continue using the inefficient and unreliable information technology service of Shared Services Canada.
In an email to members of his advisory board, leaked to the Reuters news agency, Mr. Smith said Shared Services Canada, the computer department for the whole government, had been given an effective veto over many of the chief statistician’s decisions, including collection, analysis and dissemination of data.
Rather than preside over the decline of a world-leading statistical office, Mr. Smith quit.
Mr. Trudeau announced Mr. Smith’s departure Friday and appointed Anil Arora in his place. (Mr. Arora was a senior executive at Statistics Canada from 2000 to 2010.)
In February, it became clear Shared Services Canada was not equal to the task it had been given. The agency, invented by the former Conservative government to centralize computer services of federal departments, supposedly to save money, has been trying since 2013 to create a single email system for 43 departments and agencies and bring all their data processing into its machinery. Auditor General Michael Ferguson found the centralized operation was providing poor service and likely not reducing expense.
At that point, the government should have recognized it was steering its ship onto the rocks. It should have listened more closely to the many arms of government that were asking to be spared from inclusion in the dysfunctional family of Shared Services Canada client agencies.
Among others, it should have recognized Mr. Smith had a perfectly valid point. All economic decisionmakers in business, government, and universities — in Canada and around the world — rely on Statistics Canada to tell them, in a timely way, what is happening in the Canadian economy.
The same is true in all countries, but in some countries, the statistical reports are torqued to prove what the government of the day wants to prove. That was one reason Greece got into economic trouble 10 years ago.
Canada should not even think of following in Greece’s footsteps. It should ensure the chief statistician directs his own information technology department and he is not waiting to be informed by the computer geeks in another agency what data he should collect, how it should be analyzed and when and how it should be disseminated.
That way lies economic misinformation or even, in the event of data tampering, disinformation.
The government should have learned from the debacle of its centralized payroll system that grand schemes to build new digital empires need to be treated with great skepticism. If it is going to persist with the centralized IT project, it should find some modest task Shared Services is likely to complete successfully and build from there. It should certainly not sacrifice the integrity and credibility of Canada’s leading economic information source.
The Conservative opposition is illplaced to complain about Liberal mismanagement of Statistics Canada because it lost the previous chief statistician (Munir Sheikh) by ignoring his advice about the long-form census and then misleading Canadians about it. They also started the IT centralization. The Liberals should not mimic the Tories. They should do better. An editorial from the Winnipeg Free Press (distributed by The Canadian Press)