Stalin commissioned the execution of his chief statistician after the bean counter returned a population that was smaller than what Stalin anticipated. Stalin's policies had caused famine and peasants had died, but he had also killed a number with his hand. About that, he said: “One death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic.” This was the tyranny of politics. A new tyranny is on the horizon. It is the tyranny of technology and money which I wrote about in 2017 at the United Nations Statistical Commission . This is now in full flight in the US — the paragon of democracy.
When Ban Ki-moon, the-then secretary-general of the UN, convened a 25-person team to advise him on the Data Revolution, the team produced a report titled The World that Counts. The report discussed among others the tyranny of technology and money where data could be the new oil. Under such conditions private interests will trump the rights of citizens in the rush to exercise control over this new oil.
Ivan Fellegi, the chief statistician emeritus of Canada, and a team of others couched a document that would serve as a guide for countries that broke through the collapse of the Soviet Union. This document came to be known as the UN Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics. It was adopted as the universal law by the UN General Assembly in 2014, two decades after it was tabled to the UNSC. Sadly, Fellegi had to confront the demons he was hoping to evade to advise the newly formed countries out of the break-up of the Soviet Union.
In this uncertain new world, attitudes towards quantitative expertise have become increasingly divided.
— William Davies
In the bad practice and in violation of the UN Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics (Unfops) in Canada in its census of 2011, Fellegi could not hold back and jumped into the fray “In a communist regime, evidence does not count and only ideology matters. I am fiercely devoted to evidence-based decision making, and how much that comes from my core nature or growing up in a regime where evidence was the least consideration, I cannot clearly say. It is not to say that I do not believe there is no room for political considerations in a democracy.
“There always is, but only after all evidence has been considered. One might say, ‘The evidence says this, but my value system says something else, so I am going with that.’ That is fine, but disregarding evidence altogether is very offensive to me. A government that decrees a voluntary census will not know which numbers are good and which are bad, so one must be very cautious about considering any such census information as true evidence.”
Munir Sheikh, who succeeded Fellegi, is completing his novel on the perils of his treacherous adventure into statistics in a deputy minister equivalent, which is the level of the chief statistician in Canada. In 2010 after a stint of under two years , he was forced to pack his bags and go — yes, go into the wilderness for doing the right thing.
He writes: “I never believed on that day in 2010, when I went to work as the chief statistician of Canada and came home unemployed, that I was done with public service. But nor did I expect that the form of service I would eventually pursue would be in the realm not of numbers but of art.
“On July 21 2010, a headline in the Globe and Mail said that I had personally given my blessing to the Harper government to cancel the long-form census. It was not the first such headline. But it was not true.
“Evidence is the foundation of good public policy, and a census is the foundation for good evidence. I would never have recommended that it be cancelled.”
Statistics is a conduit of trust. I wrote once in appreciation of what this conduit did for South Africa. The then UN SG, Ban Ki-moon, granted the South African government the rights to host the very first UN World Data Forum . Stats SA became host to the world of more than 1,400 nerds, statisticians, financiers, NGOs, politicians and academia who deliberated on matters statistics, technology, data, finance, politics and governance in a 100 sessions averaging six panellists each. At stake was how we mobilise evidence for posterity and prosperity of people and planet. Second, how we ensure that no-one is left behind. And third how we mobilise our capabilities to harness evidence-based systems for implementing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) agenda. These stakeholders tried to work out the modalities of collecting, organising and processing evidence to meet the demands of planning that leaves no-one behind and guarantees prosperity for people and planet.
Innovative approaches to the collection of data for statistical applications in policy development now abound. These innovations have led to the possibility of delivering better knowledge bases in evidence-based policymaking. The use of mobile and hand-held devices, satellite imagery and limitless technological possibilities have stretched prospects in statistical applications to boundaries that have hitherto been unknown. This has led to the coining of the Data Revolution concept.
Statisticians must defend the independence of this authority. In South Africa while I am frustrated by the sizeable ignorance and disregard for use of evidence in plain sight, the politics have not interfered with the production of numerals.
The report to the UN SG by the Independent Expert Advisory Group on Data Revolution in which I served, suggests that the capacity and capability of the world to generate data is unprecedented. This state of abilities explodes possibilities and puts paid to a Marxist-Leninist conception of a material universe that is and should be knowable. The questions that have to be asked are not about the lack of data, but how data is organised for citizens to gain insights and improve knowledge and understanding of their universe; what are the value chains and transmission mechanisms of data; how the knowledge and understanding are applied and used for good and transformation of lives for the better; how the systems are sustained for good; and who owns these data systems especially, and can they be open.
Sadly , in the US, Steve Pierson, the director of science policy at the American Statistical Association on February 8, a mere 19 days after Trump’s inauguration, said: “Economists and statisticians say they are worried about political influence creeping into agencies that produce numbers that the public — as well as policymakers and investors — rely on to make decisions around the world.”
That Trump trumps the American institutions of evidence is well described by William Davies, who points out: “The declining authority of statistics — and the experts who analyse them — is at the heart of the crisis that has become known as ‘post-truth’ politics. And in this uncertain new world, attitudes towards quantitative expertise have become increasingly divided.
“From one perspective, grounding politics in statistics is elitist, undemocratic and oblivious to people’s emotional investments in their community and nation. It is just one more way that privileged people in London, Washington DC or Brussels seek to impose their worldview on everybody else.
“From the opposite perspective, statistics are quite the opposite of elitist. They enable journalists, citizens and politicians to discuss society as a whole, not on the basis of anecdote, sentiment or prejudice, but in ways that can be validated. The alternative to quantitative expertise is less likely to be democracy than an unleashing of tabloid editors and demagogues to provide their own ‘truth’ of what is going on across society.”
Statisticians must defend the independence of this authority. In South Africa while I am frustrated by the sizeable ignorance and disregard for use of evidence in plain sight, the politics have not interfered with the production of numerals. In fact the legislators have voted in the strengthening of these numerals. The Statistics Act has been revised and passed by parliament in January and will soon be new law when President Cyril Ramaphosa signs it.
Dr Pali Lehohla is a Professor of Practice at the University of Johannesburg, a Research Associate at Oxford University, a board member of Institute for Economic Justice at Wits and a distinguished Alumni of the University of Ghana. He is the former Statistician-General of South Africa
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