PRESS RELEASE
DR. MARIO MARAZZI‐SANTIAGO
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

February 15, 2018

AUTHORIZED STATEMENTS BY DR. MARIO MARAZZI-SANTIAGO, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF THE PUERTO RICO INSTITUTE OF STATISTICS, ON COMMUNICATION FROM THE FISCAL OVERSIGHT BOARD TO THE GOVERNOR REGARDING THE REORGANIZATION OF THE STATISTICAL FUNCTIONS OF THE PUERTO RICAN GOVERNMENT

We appreciate the statements of the Fiscal Oversight Board regarding the desirability of maintaining the Puerto Rico Statistics Institute as a public instrument, independent and separate from the Government of Puerto Rico.

In addition, the Board made several recommendations, some of which we wish to comment on. In the first instance, he proposed modernizing and updating Puerto Rico's statistical functions and consolidating them into the Puerto Rico Statistics Institute. We share the concern of the Board and the Government that the fragmentation of statistical functions results in costly and ineffective processes. We are under orders from the Government to design a reorganization plan dedicated to statistical functions that achieve this objective. It's never too late to start working together, collaboratively, to achieve shared and desired goals.

Second, the Board joined the expressions of the bipartisan congressional Task Force of Puerto Rico, also created under the federal PROMESA Act, to the effect that the Institute must be allocated a larger budget, aligned with the important responsibilities it exercises. This recommendation represents an extraordinary opportunity for the Government to comply, for the first time, with the budgetary allocation approved for the Institute in its Organic Law.

Third, the Board recommended that the Institute's independence be protected from political intervention. This is an extremely sensitive issue that every Government we have worked with has had to confront, know, understand, process, accept and eventually take advantage of. At the moment, the Institute oversees the statistical work of the Executive Branch. In any other area, oversight functions would not be allowed to be disrupted. For example, one of the baseball teams would never be allowed to choose or change or influence the referee of a game. Why do we think with statistics that we can, should and is it even normal?

We all suffer from the same disinformation after decades of politicized and underfunded deterioration of the statistical functions of the Government of Puerto Rico. Finally, for 10 years we have had a new instrument, the Puerto Rico Statistics Institute, whose main purpose is to pave the way to complete, reliable statistics with fast and universal access. Let's take advantage of it.

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Press Contact: Sandra Morales Blanes (787) 688-0401

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To create the “Department of Economic Development and Trade Reorganization Plan Implementation Act of 2018”; amend Articles 4, 5, repeal Articles 6, 7, 11 and 12, renumber Article 8 as 6, renumber Articles 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21 and 22 as Articles 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 and 17 of the Department of Economic Development and Trade Reorganization Plan 4-1994; amend Article 5 of Act 5 of Act 4 M. 22 of July 24, 1985, as amended, known as the “Economic Development Bank Act for Puerto Rico”...

PRESS RELEASE

February 7, 2018

DR. MARIO MARAZZI-SANTIAGO
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

Executive Director of the Institute assures that it is a “dangerous precedent” and guarantees the loss of federal funds the merger of that body into the DDEC

San Juan, PR, February 7, 2018 — After asserting that its provisions are contrary to federal and state public policy aimed at preventing the manipulation of data and statistics, the executive director of the Puerto Rico Institute of Statistics (Institute), Dr. Mario Marazzi-Santiago, today expressed his opposition to House Project 1403 (P. de la C. 1403), which proposes the merger of the Institute into the Department of Economic Development and Commerce (DDEC) in order to outsource its functions.

“The provisions on the Institute of Statistics in P. de la C. 1403 are contrary to federal and state public policy aimed at avoiding the manipulation of data and statistics, to benefit the interests of current administrations or private interests with influence. In short, these constitute a dangerous precedent that destroys the credibility of a transparent, effective, objective and complete system of collecting statistical data for the benefit of Puerto Rico,” said Marazzi-Santiago during the presentation of his paper to the Special Commission for the Restructuring and Reorganization of Puerto Rico and the Chamber of Government Commission.

The Executive Director of the Institute anticipated that if the Reorganization Plan is approved and implemented, the Institute will also result in the loss of federal funds in that body. He recalled that on December 18, 2017, the New Government of Puerto Rico Act, No. 122-2017, was approved in order to maximize personal resources to the Executive Branch and the transfer, outsourcing and creation of new and more efficient government structures and agencies. Article 4.02 of that Act provides that “any change to a program or agency under this Act will be rescinded if the change results in the loss of federal funds in a program being used in Puerto Rico.”

He added that, likewise, Article 14 of Reorganization Plan No. 1 provides that any change to a program or agency under this Act “will be rescinded if the change results in the loss of federal funds in a program being used in Puerto Rico.” In the case of the Institute, the proposed consolidation with the DDEC and the subsequent outsourcing guarantee Puerto Rico's non-compliance with current agreements with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), under the National Violent Death Registration System, a federal competitive grant that the Institute won recently, said Dr. Marazzi-Santiago.

“We have a duty to alert this honorable Commission to take corrective action and amend P. de la C. 1403 accordingly. Specifically, in accordance with Article 4.02 of Law No. 122-2017, P. de la C. 1403 must be amended by deleting the entire chapter dedicated to the Institute of Statistics of Puerto Rico,” said Dr. Marazzi-Santiago.

Dr. Marazzi-Santiago took advantage of his participation to propose three changes through which greater independence could effectively be achieved for the Institute, unlike the ill-advised measures contained in P. de la C. 1403. The following are the alternatives presented in his paper:

1. The Institute's Board has 1 member who is a government official. This may limit the Institute's independence. To address this detail, Act No. 209 can be amended so that no member of the Institute's Board of Directors is a government official. This ensures the Institute's ability to operate independently. They would all be private citizens, with no connection to current or previous political administrations, nominated on the basis of their personal and professional integrity and objectivity, and their educational preparation and demonstrated competence in the use of statistics, and will work on behalf of the users of the data, and not of other interests.
2. Exempt the Institute from administrative laws that hinder its ability to operate regardless of political influences and that increase bureaucracy, without implying that the Institute in any way abandon the healthy public administration policies that have distinguished its operations since its inception. This includes Laws 66- 2014, 3-2017, 8-2017 and 26-2017. The Institute must be able to appoint the experts it deems appropriate to complete its highly technical tasks and to manage its allocated budget without political influence.
3. Provide for all or some of the candidates for the Institute's Board to be proposed by professional and industry associations that represent these fields of expertise rather than government officials.

On the other hand, with regard to the Institute's financial self-sustainability, Dr. Marazzi-Santiago assured that a bill (P. del S. 12) already exists before the Legislative Assembly that proposes amendments to the Institute's Enabling Act and that would empower it and would allow it to obtain a greater portion of its income from sources outside the Government of Puerto Rico, so it is unnecessary to outsource the statistics system to achieve these purposes.

The Executive Director of the Institute also highlighted that there is broad and open opposition both at the local and federal levels to the provisions related to the Institute in Reorganization Plan No. 1 and in P. de la C. 1403, including the American Statistical Association, the largest professional association of statisticians in the world, as well as 15 Democratic and Republican congressmen, the Puerto Rico Private Sector Coalition, the Puerto Rico Transparency Network and about 2,000 people who formalized in just over a week your position through a cyber request on the portal change.org.

“As a result of the above-mentioned operational and fiscal independence, and of the sound public resource management policies adopted by the Institute since its inception, the Institute is one of very few governmental entities in Puerto Rico characterized by its efficiency and agility, by never having incurred a budget deficit, and by making the best possible use of the budgetary allocations it receives. In other words, the Institute is not part of the problem of bureaucracy, redundancy and inefficiency that Act No. 122-2017 and P. de la C. 1403 intend to address. On the contrary, the Institute is a public entity that serves as a model of public administration,” concluded Dr. Marazzi-Santiago.

The Puerto Rico Statistics Institute is an autonomous governmental entity responsible for coordinating the Government's statistical production service to ensure that the data collection and statistics systems, on which public policies are based, are complete, reliable, and have quick and universal access. The IEPR has in its inventory, accessible through www.estadisticas.pr.gov, about 300 statistical products. In addition, it is a custodian and provides access to over 100 data sets or “data sets” through www.data.pr.gov and to over 40 tables and more than 6 thousand indicators through: www.indicadores.pr.

In addition, as the leading entity of Puerto Rico's SDC, the IEPR manages the SDC portal, which contains the main statistical reports and publications of the U.S. Census Bureau on Puerto Rico, specifically those that are most in demand, such as annual population estimates; the Puerto Rico Community Survey and official statistics on Puerto Rico's decennial population and housing censuses, among others. The Puerto Rico SDC portal can be accessed through: https://censo.estadisticas.pr/.

For more information you can visit our website:www.estadisticas.pr.gov. In addition, you can follow us on social networks through Facebook (estadisticas.pr), Twitter (@EstadisticasPR) and LinkedIn (Institute of Statistics of Puerto Rico) accounts.

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Press Contact: Sandra Morales Blanes/787-688-0401

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To create the “Department of Economic Development and Trade Reorganization Plan Implementation Act of 2018”; amend Articles 4, 5, repeal Articles 6, 7, 11 and 12, renumber Article 8 as 6, renumber Articles 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21 and 22 as Articles 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 and 17 of the Department of Economic Development and Trade Reorganization Plan 4-1994; amend Article 5 of Act 5 of Act 4 M. 22 of July 24, 1985, as amended, known as the “Economic Development Bank Act for Puerto Rico”; amend Article 4 of Law 103- 2007, as amended, known as the “Puerto Rican Institute for Mutual Assistance with Democratic Cuba Act”...

PRESS RELEASE

February 4, 2018

DR. MARIO MARAZZI-SANTIAGO
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

AUTHORIZED STATEMENTS BY THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF THE INSTITUTE OF STATISTICS ON CONGRESSIONAL EXPRESSION AGAINST PROPOSED CONSOLIDATION AND OUTSOURCING

Last Friday, a group of 15 congressional members of the United States House of Representatives, both Republican and Democratic, signed a letter to express their rejection of the provisions on the Institute of Statistics contained in Reorganization Plan No. 1 and its enabling bills, both Senate Bill 809 and House Bill 1403.

In their communication, the congressmen recognize that the Institute of Statistics is a key ally of federal statistical agencies and that, greater collaboration between the Institute and federal statistical agencies, is essential for the Federal Government to produce the same statistics on Puerto Rico, which are already produced for all 50 states of the United States.

We greatly appreciate these expressions and we join them. That's the way it is. The Institute has been working for years, for example, to include the economy of Puerto Rico in statistics on the United States economy. For this reason, the Federal Government has required us to make some improvements to the methodologies used by the Planning Board.

In fact, we are currently the only entity in Puerto Rico that dedicates its own resources, including 10% of our budget, to making these improvements. For this purpose, there are already newly signed interagency agreements between the Institute and the Federal Government. It's just a matter of being allowed to execute them. We are extremely concerned that the proposed reorganization will stop or postpone these important projects, which could undermine the inclusion of Puerto Rico in the United States economy.

We are confident that in the coming days their counterparts in the Legislative Assembly of Puerto Rico will carefully weigh Reorganization Plan No. 1 and its enabling bills and will also join the call of their peers in the Federal Congress regarding the importance of maintaining an independent Institute of Statistics.

Likewise, we trust that in the coming days more voices will continue to unite and speak out against the proposed reorganization, just as more than 1,700 people have already done through the cyber petition on the change.org platform initiated and promoted by the American Statistical Association.

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Press Contact: Sandra Morales Blanes (787) 688-0401

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Statistics Institute reveals the Results Report of its 2018 Statistics Publication Calendar

San Juan, PR, February 2, 2018 — The Puerto Rico Statistics Institute (Institute) today released the Results Report of its 2018 Statistics Publication Calendar (CAPe), which includes the schedule for the publication of statistics on Puerto Rico for this calendar year and which, in turn, provides an evaluation of the commitment of government entities to users regarding the publication dates of their statistics for the calendar year 2017.

As detailed in the CAPe Results Report, for calendar year 2018, 22 state and federal agencies have been included in this commitment to publish their 45 statistical reports. Regarding the specific performance of compliance with the CAPe, the report highlights in its introduction that: “For 2017, the first 3 local agencies that achieved greater consistency in complying with their publication schedule on time were the Department of Labor and Human Resources (with the Employment and Unemployment report, as well as Non-Agricultural Wage Employment), the Department of Health (with its Weekly Report on Arboviral Diseases) and the Puerto Rico Police (with its Type I Crimes report)”.

On the other hand, the agencies with the lowest on-time compliance were the Puerto Rico Police (with their Fatal Accident Report), the Trade and Export Company (Retail Sales), the Port Authority (Air and Sea Cargo and Passengers) and the Tourism Company (Monthly Statistics Report).

The 2018 CAPe Results Report is available at the following link: https://estadisticas.pr/calendario. In addition, it has been distributed through the Institute's Statistical Report Subscription System, which allows users to receive directly to their email and free of charge, some of the statistical reports published by state and federal agencies. During the calendar year 2017, 34 different statistical reports published by 21 agencies of the Government of Puerto Rico and the Federal Government of the United States were released through the Subscription System. While the total number of subscriptions from its inception in 2008 to December 2017 amounts to a total of 1,609.189 million.

”Throughout these 10 years of existence of the Statistics Publication Calendar, we have been able to verify that not only during 2017, but historically, the statistical publications of the Tourism Company, the Trade and Export Company, the Industrial Development Company and other entities attached to the Department of Economic Development and Commerce (DDEC), are among the monthly publications with the longest delays in publication or data lag”, said Dr. Mario Marazzi-Santiago, executive director of the Institute.

One of the main reasons that led to the creation of the Institute was the excessive delay in producing certain statistics. That is why the Act established strict schedules for the publication of statistics with which the Institute has fully and consistently complied during its 10 years of existence.

The Puerto Rico Statistics Institute is an autonomous governmental entity responsible for coordinating the Government's statistical production service to ensure that the data collection and statistics systems, on which public policies are based, are complete, reliable, and have quick and universal access. The IEPR has nearly 300 statistical products in its inventory, accessible through www.estadisticas.pr. In addition, it is a guardian and provides access to over 100 data sets or “data sets” through www.data.pr.gov and to over 40 tables and more than 6 thousand indicators through: www.indicadores.pr.

In addition, as the leading entity of Puerto Rico's SDC, the IEPR manages the SDC portal, which contains the main statistical reports and publications of the U.S. Census Bureau on Puerto Rico, specifically those that are most in demand, such as annual population estimates; the Puerto Rico Community Survey and official statistics on Puerto Rico's decennial population and housing censuses, among others. The Puerto Rico SDC portal can be accessed at: https://censo.estadisticas.pr/.

For more information you can visit our website: www.estadisticas.pr.gov. In addition, you can follow us on social networks through Facebook (estadisticas.pr), Twitter (@EstadisticasPR) and LinkedIn (Institute of Statistics of Puerto Rico) accounts.

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Press Contact: Sandra Morales Blanes/787-688-0401

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