Independence of the Statistical Office of the Republic of Slovenia and powers of its Director-General

The area of national statistics in Slovenia is regulated by the National Statistics Act, which follows the fundamental principles of neutrality, objectivity and professional independence. In accordance with the Government of the Republic of Slovenia Act, the National Statistics Act stipulates for the Statistical Office the status of a professionally independent Government agency, responsible directly to the Prime Minister.

Because national statistics is a professionally independent activity of implementing the program of statistical surveys, which is stipulated in Article 1 of the National Statistics Act, independence of the Statistical Office in terms of human resources is also necessary. The second chapter of this Act stipulates that the Statistical Office is headed and represented by the Director-General appointed by the Government of the Republic of Slovenia for the period of five years with the possibility of reappointment. In accordance with the fundamental principle of independence of national statistics, this prevents the enforcement of political responsibility of the head of the Statistical Office.

With the last amendment of the National Statistics Act in 2001 and as a result of harmonisation of statistical legislation with the EU legislation, which was pointed out by the European Commission in 1998, the mandate of the Director-General was prolonged from four to five years. This enables human resources independence of the Statistical Office towards the mandate of the Government of the Republic of Slovenia and the National Assembly, which is not usual for Government services but is necessary to ensure a professionally independent activity of implementing the program of statistical surveys.

The National Statistics Act thus stipulates that the Director-General of the Statistical Office of the Republic of Slovenia is autonomous as regards decisions involving professional and methodological issues of national statistics. Nobody is entitled to give binding instructions regarding:

• contents of methodological bases of statistical surveys,
• extent and kind of data which is collected, processed and disseminated on the basis of the programmes of statistical surveys,
• preferential dissemination of the results.