On November 25 and 26 November 2020, the High-level meeting on ESS communication and governance in a time of crisis of the Directors General of NSIs and Eurostat took place. The meeting, originally planned to take place in Wiesbaden, was held virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Directors General exchanged experiences and lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic in the areas of governance, communication, data collection and production, and innovation. On the topic of communication, they discussed in particular challenges and opportunities for the ESS arising from the current crisis, such as strengthening the relevance and brand of official statistics, the possibility of innovation for official statistics during the crisis, and the creation of new strategic partnerships, especially with regard to privately held data. Directors-General also agreed on a coordinated response to future crises affecting the ESS, which was adopted as the “Wiesbaden Memorandum”.
Learn more about the Wiesbaden Memorandum here.