Official statistics serve as an important compass for policymakers due to their impartiality and transparency. This is especially true in the current post-pandemic environment of great uncertainty and widespread disinformation. Access to privately held "big data" would improve the quality of official statistics. We propose a set of principles under which the public and the private sector can form partnerships to leverage the potential of new-generation data in the public interest.
The principles, compatible with a variety of legal frameworks, aim at establishing trust between data collectors, data subjects, and statistical authorities, while also ensuring the technical usability of the data and the sustainability of partnerships over time. They are driven by a logic of incentive compatibility and burden sharing.
