National Statistical Institutes are strongly committed to improving their statistical production processes, including the integrated use of traditional and non-traditional data sources. This modernisation requires cost-effective statistical software tools that implement sound methodologies. The Italian National Statistics Institute (Istat) has adopted open source tools such as R and Python alongside proprietary software to increase flexibility, foster innovation, reduce costs and align with national and European government initiatives. This has led to the in-house development of statistical software tools for different phases of the statistical process; these tools, together with those developed by other national statistical offices, have significantly increased the resources available for official statistics.
The adoption of open source statistical tools in the production of official statistics is not straightforward and requires efforts at the technical, organisational and cultural levels. A clear strategy should be defined and governance mechanisms and bodies as well as a support structure should be put in place. This article illustrates the work done in the past and more recently at Istat. More in detail, it illustrates the key aspects of the recent guidelines and methodological governance published at the end of 2024. This was an important step towards a more comprehensive governance for the successful use of open source statistical tools in the production of official statistics.
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