The need for timely official statistics. The COVID-19 pandemic as a driver for innovation

This paper discusses how Statistics Netherlands managed to respond quickly with a range of new outputs to the sudden increase in the need for statistical information following the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. It describes the innovation process already in place, as well as the innovations in response to the pandemic. This is followed by a discussion of what made speedy innovation and implementation possible, after which lessons are drawn in order to maintain the ability to react quickly to future policy questions. One important success factor is the combination of new data sources with already existing statistics for calibration.

The developments at Statistics Netherlands can be seen as a case study. Several other NSIs also accelerated innovation after the outbreak of the pandemic, such as the Australian Bureau of Statistics and the British Office for National Statistics.