Policy Formulation Paper

Policy Formulation Paper

Abstract

In the end of last year, the National Bureau of Statistics, Ministry of Supervision and Department of Human Resource of China jointly issued a new policy to punish immoral behaviors in statistical work. It was the first departmental rule and regulation for the behavior of "cheating, forgery, tampering with statistical data.” Violators will receive demerits on his record, demotion or get fired.

I fortunately had an opportunity to interview Ms Xiaoming Zhu, who is the Secretary of the Bureau of Statistics of Jiang Su province and Mr John Horbas, who is an economist for the Illinois Department of Revenue. Based on the communications with them, I made an analysis concerning why and how the policy was formulated and also made a comparison between statistic systems in China and USA.

Key words: vertical system, conflicts of interests, efficiency

Goals and purpose:

First, I’d like to brief some background information about the statistic system In China, the only official statistics department is the National Bureau of Statistics of the People's Republic of China. Its main function is to lead the national statistical work. They have local agencies all around the country. However, those local agencies are supervised by local governments.

The United States uses a decentralized system, generally consisting of two parts: the statistical agencies of government departments and local statistical agencies. And there is no Central Bureau of Statistics. Those statistics departments are responsible for collecting and publishing statistical information for different government departments, such as economic data provided by the U.S. Department of Commerce, labor and wage information from the U.S. Department of Labor. And the statistic departments and local governments have collaborative relationship.

Trying to publish accurate and up-to date statistical information should be the primary task of the department of statistics....