Establishing the optimal balance between improvements in organisational management and overall product quality is as difficult in a national statistics agency as it is in any other institution.
Over the past 18 months Statistics SA has had to devote considerable energy and resources to improving internal management and support systems. Financial management and administration, systems of reporting, budgeting and the planning cycles have all consumed resources.
However, systems for organisational management have value only in as much as they support and underpin an institution's core objectives. In Stats SA's case these centre on the collection, processing, analysis and dissemination of data that meet the key criteria of quality.
Coherence - the degree to which information can be brought together with other statistical information within a broad analytical framework.
Interpretability - the availability of the supplementary and meta data necessary to interpret and use it appropriately.
Stats SA has embarked on a programme covering the six dimensions of data quality. Eventually, this will impact not only on the way in which data is collected and disseminated but on the very governance and management of official statistics in South Africa.
The introduction of a new business register, underpinning sampling for economic statistics, is one element in this programme. Already the new business register has facilitated more extensive coverage of the economy.
Improvements in Stats SA's master sample, which is used to draw samples for regular household surveys, are another.
Stats SA's development project, which is investigating ways of collecting prices used to calculate indices such as the consumer price index (CPI), involves another major quality initiative.
A team of 17 people, including the national manager of CPI field collections at the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) as a consultant, is spearheading the testing of new and more accurate ways of collecting prices.
Stats SA has been able to access some of the best international expertise in its programmes of continuous data improvement.
World-renowned statistical experts from Australia and Canada have assisted in the redevelopment of the business register, as well as the re-engineering of some of the key economic series.
Only last week a senior manager from the ABS was in Pretoria to advise on the development of data warehousing in Stats SA - a field in which Australia is an international leader.
Pali Lehohla is South Africa's statistician-general and head of Stats SA. For more information on Stats SA and its statistical outputs visit www.statssa.gov.