Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due
PROVERBS 3:27 provides memories of the future – wise lessons for statisticians of the future – it goes thus: “Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due, when it is in your power to do so.”
The good book goes on to clear any doubt about what the “to whom it is due” actually means. It argues that it is not about doing so because you owed someone and you are making good a debt – but it cuts to the heart of the UN Fundamental Principles for Official Statistics – it is about the value of information and the right to it as inalienable.
It is about the power of knowledge and its transformative, developmental and catalytic role.
This is about your neighbour. “Do not say to your neighbour – go and come back tomorrow I will give it – when you have it.” It is about the good Samaritan in Luke. But why is this relevant?
It is January 2003, and this is almost five years since my first attendance of the UN Statistics Commission and marks two-and-half years in being the Statistician-General.
I am worried by the mounting challenges in economic statistics and those for the Census 2001 data processing. There is also a side show playing out. Some staff are compiling a dossier alleging corruption and impropriety against me. At 1pm I ask my personal assistant, Lena Soares, to find for me a certain Canadian who works for Statistics Canada. I was impressed by his presentation at the UN Statistics Commission in 1998.
I cannot remember his name and the only memory of him I have is that he is short with a name that starts with an R.
Lena ran a search and by 2pm she had his photo and name. He was in India and by 4pm I was on the phone with him. I informed him of the unease I am having and that the problem was very big.
We agreed to meet in New York during the following Statistics Commission in March. At 8pm, Wednesday, March 5, 2003, we meet at an Indian restaurant in New York and agree on a long-term plan.
Back home I arrange a meeting with the Governor of the Reserve Bank, Tito Mboweni, to alert him of the long-term programme for economic statistics and assistance I will be securing from Dr Jacob Ryten, a renowned statistician, who was 68 years then.
By the end of March the meeting with the governor occurs and discussions are fairly brief. But as I am about to step out of his office with Risenga Maluleke, who was then my Chief of Staff, Governor Mboweni says: “Statistician-General, the PPI looks fine, but what about the CPI? It is trending in ways that are not consistent.”
I assure the governor that we are applying consistent methods and I doubt if there could be anything wrong.
Spring meetings end mid-April – Minister Trevor Manuel fresh from there comes straight to my office.
He asks about what is happening to the CPI. I assure him of authenticity of methods, but I will check.
I get the runs and nothing significant appears on the numbers.
Further runs over the weekend are undertaken and the problems are big.
On Tuesday I call the minister and ask for his co-ordinates as I need to see him urgently – the problem is big.
We discuss He is in Cape Town. I catch the evening flight. At 9.30pm I am at his residence and the two of us discuss.
First question: How many lives has a cat? I do not answer that one. Second question: How are you going to deal with the problem? I answer: Transparently. He affirms the position and says use statutory advice from the Statistics Council. The key question is whether to revise or not.
I had consulted Jacob Ryten, Dennis Trewin, the Australian Statistician, and Rob Edwards, a price statistician of note at the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
The advice is unanimous – revise the series. Advice accepted and revisions are implemented from May 2003 retrospectively to March 2002. Ridicule of the Statistician-General for CPI debacle 2003.
The root cause, the painful drama towards the revision, regrettable financial losses and sustained remedial methodological measures cannot fit in this column and are therefore for the memoirs.
Suffice to mention that the Sunday Times about a week later as we had a to and fro on publishing the correction led with a headline by John Stopford.
The front page had a caption of Maria Ramos, then Director-General of the Treasury and I. The words were “I told him” and “He says he did not know”.
By June I intensified training, put systems in place and financial resources were secured.
The making of an institution began in earnest and the Statistician-General, Council and the Minister stayed the course of building.
Many a commentator talk about good or bad news when specific series of statistical releases are up or are down.
For instance recently the set of numbers on poverty and gross domestic product delivered what media and others considered bad and good, respectively.
The Statistician-General knows only good or bad methods and is agnostic to results.
As I step down as Statistician-General I heed Proverbs 3:27, not to withhold good from those to whom it is due, (the politicians, private sector, academia, policy makers, NGOs, press and the public) when it is in my power to do so.
I have ensured that they get the results and the attendant explanations. In similar vein I have not withheld and I cannot withhold the fact that the financing of Statistics South Africa is precarious.
As a result over the past twelve months I have not appointed one single soul to replace those who left. The financial cuts have been very severe and maiming on Stats SA.
Highest gap Evidence shows that Stats SA out of the 43 departments has suffered the highest gap between its vacancy rate and the cut.
The average gap between vacancies and cuts are of the order of 3 percent and Stats SA stands as an outlier at 9 percent.
Stats SA will be able to pay only part of the staff and not all the staff by the end of the financial year under the current financial position.
Worst still, the roll-over funds Stats SA had requested were denied.
This is detrimental, because based on a plan adopted three years ago among other projects, Stats SA was moving towards a technology driven low cost data collection regime. Through the Citizen Satisfaction Survey and the Community Survey we proved the concept.
The next step was to test this regime for all field based statistical collections. For that to happen we requested a roll-over of R36 million for use to test this process through parallel surveys for robustness of methods and systems. When this was denied it is impossible to proceed nor is it possible to proceed with the current high cost paper-based collection regime.
Faced with this dilemma, my experience of the CPI debacle of 2003 emanating in part from my incompetence and in other part from refusal to fund the October Household Survey rings loud.
What Manuel and I pledged in 2003 would never be repeated now runs the risk of being repeated.
It is not my incompetence this time, but denying the funds. I am reminded that Proverbs 3:27 says “Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due, when it is in your power to do so.” Fundamental principles for Official Statistics and the Statistics Act over which I preside compel me to do so and I am doing so.