AMERICAN STATISTICAL ASSOCIATION REQUIRES ROSSELLÓ NOT TO DISMANTLE PUERTO RICO'S STATISTICS INSTITUTE

The executive director attacked the measure and invited the Government to take statistics seriously at this time of fiscal crisis

San Juan, PR, January 25, 2018 — The American Statistical Association, known as the American Statistical Association (ASA) today released a cyber petition entitled Clear Accounts: Let's Preserve the Autonomy and Impartiality of the Puerto Rico Statistics Institute in which he calls on both Governor Ricardo Rosselló and members of the Legislature to desist from transferring the functions of the Puerto Rico Statistics Institute (IEPR) to the Puerto Rico Department of Economic Development and Trade in order to eventually outsource all the statistical functions of the Government of Puerto Rico.

The ASA request makes specific reference to Reorganization Plan No. 1 And to Senate Bill 809, which was published yesterday and signed by five scientists from prestigious entities such as Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Yale University.

In addition, he emphasizes that this measure “would dismantle the IEPR and its autonomy, and would jeopardize the transparent and impartial statistical analyses that are critical to the functioning of Puerto Rico and to decision-making in all sectors of society, public and private.”

To this end, the executive director of the Puerto Rico Institute of Statistics, Dr. Mario Marazzi-Santiago, insisted that everywhere in the world there is a recognition of the need for official statistics to be prepared by independent governmental entities so that they can carry out their functions in a manner totally disconnected from political influences.

The Government of Puerto Rico has a long history of producing, disseminating and presenting rigged, outdated, misinterpreted, and incomplete statistics, and then access to sources of information is not provided so that the information can be verified, either by the citizen or by a congressman. The reality is that statistics are a serious issue and it is time for our Government to take them seriously, particularly if it wants to address its own fiscal problem.

Marazzi Santiago assured that there is no way that the proposed reorganization of the Institute of Statistics, as a program within the Department of Economic Development and Trade or outsourced by it, will solve the serious problem of reliability and credibility that the Government of Puerto Rico has with its statistics.

“We appreciate the efforts of the American Statistical Association (ASA) to create a vehicle that allows data users to express themselves publicly about the proposed reorganization,” said Dr. Marazzi-Santiago.

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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 Institute has in its inventory, accessible through www.estadisticas.pr, more than 300 statistical products. 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.

For more information you can visit our website: www.estadisticas.pr. 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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