New direction of the reform of the statistical system in Japan

Abstract

Current reform efforts on the Japanese statistical system began in mid-2004 by the discussion at the Council of Economic and Fiscal Policy chaired by the Prime Minister. Because of the nature of the subject which requires highly expert knowledge, a special committee was set up in the Cabinet Office in November 2004 to follow up the discussion and to make specific reform recommendations to the Government. The committee made its report in June 2005 and the succeeding committee made its report in June 2006.

These committees pointed out that, while the Japanese Government statistical system was reconstructed fairly rapidly after World War II and evolved in response to social and economic changes, there are now deficiencies in meeting new demands and challenges, such as responding to the rapidly changing industrial structure and meeting the new and various needs of users of statistics.

The current legal framework for official statistics and statistical administration was established mainly by the Statistics Law of 1947 and the Statistical Reports Coordination Law of 1952. The second committee recommended that these two laws be revised in order to provide a sufficient and sound basis for the production of statistics and also to improve the effectiveness of statistical planning and coordination functions.

Based on the recommendations of the committee, the Government prepared a legislative bill to revise the two laws on statistical systems and submitted it to the Diet (i.e. The Japanese Government) on February 13 of 2007. The Diet acted on the bill on May 16.

This paper gives an outline of the current reform efforts on statistical systems in Japan.