Elena Zarova tells the participants of Rosstat conference about the role of data science in official statistics

“Data science plays an important role in processing and analysis of official statistics and can be used for a wide range of research,” - Prof., Doctor of Economics, Honored scientist of the Russian Federation, Elena Zarova highlighted in her report.

She represented Moscow Analytical Center on the scientific-practical conference organized by Federal State Statistics Service Rosstat.

In her report Prof. Zarova mentioned the importance of data science topic during the 63rd ISI World Statistics Congress that took place in July 2021. She spoke about machine learning (ML) methods and their application in the work with alternative secondary sources for official statistics (streaming big and administrative data). The expert shared the cases of successful application of ML methods by the official statistics of foreign countries. For example, the use of regression trees and logistic regression for classifying population according to race and ethnicity.

Elena Zarova mentioned that it was possible to get acquainted with the practical application of these methods in the product developed by Moscow Analytical Center - the Integrated Data Warehouse. She highlighted “the interest of users to Moscow Analytical Center products and the possibility of introducing ML methods in Rosstat practice to produce new high-quality data”. As well she emphasized the importance to develop collaboration between national statistics bodies and expert organizations developing ML methods and data science in general.

International scientific-practical conference took place in Rybinsk, Yaroslavskaya oblast on September 6-9. The focus was to sum up the project “Developing the system of national statistics – 2”. The online participants of plenary session were the Head of Federal State Statistics Service Pavel Malkov, World Bank’s Country Director for the Russian Federation Renaud Seligmann, Deputy Minister of Digital Development, Communications and Mass Media Oleg Kachanov and etc.