Measuring data quality on a national basis

Matthys Izak (Marius) Cronje, Statistic South Africa, South Africa

Statistics South Africa is the national statistical agency for South Africa.  The work of the organisation is guide by a law of the Country called the Statistical Act.  Part of the responsibility assigned by the act to the organisation is to asses and declare statistics from other organisations as official statistics.  This can only be achieved if you are able to measure the quality of the data from which the statistics are derived.  This has lead to the need for a universal instrument to use when assessing the quality of data.  The paper describes in short the need and development of the South African Statistical Data Assessment Framework (SASQAF).  It describes the dimensions and indicators as set out by SASQAF as well as the benchmarks that is used to measure data quality.  The paper further details the implementation of SASQAF both internally and externally within the National Statistical System (NSS) in South Africa and looks at the Piloting of SASQAF.  It looks at SASQAF as a driving instrument for improving data quality.  Lastly the paper looks at possible shortcoming of SASQAF as well as areas of further development.

Keywords: Data Quality, Quality assesment, quality improvement