Abstract
National and international statistical agencies are facing new challenges to produce high-tech products for the end users of statistics. At the same time, the nature of information is changing from a public-domain service to a commercially exchanged commodity. The policies on the roles which different actors play in the dissemination of statistical products with built-in information technology should be formulated before large-scale data transfer through database-networks, optical storage devices or more traditional tapes and diskettes oblige national statistical agencies to act. At the national level, statistical agencies have already been forced to rethink their basic policies on product development, marketing, copyrights, product responsibilities etc., but the roles of international organizations and private vendors as retailers of national statistical data have not yet been thoroughly discussed in the statistical community. Since statistics is a field of science and industry, where the opportunities offered by the information technology should be seized immediately and effectively, the adjustment of the ‘rules of the game’ ought to advance side by side with the progress of technology.
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