Statistical and Data Literacy in Policy-Making

Reija Helenius works as a Group Leader in Statistics Finland. One of her duties is the promotion of statistical literacy. She collaborates with a wide network of different agents, such as a number of educational institutions. Reija Helenius has also been a member of Eurostat’s Digicom project, coordinating Finland’s national Statistics Olympics. Since 2010, Reija Helenius has been the director of the International Statistical Literacy Project. She is an ISI elected member and a member of IASE and IAOS. She is also the chairperson of Tietojohtaminen ry (The Finnish Society for Knowledge Management). She is also an active member of the Finnish Statistical Society.

Steve MacFeely is the Director of Data and Analytics for the World Health Organization and the Adjunct Professor at the Centre for Policy Studies in University College Cork, Ireland. Before working in the WHO, Steve was the Head of Statistics & Information at the United Nation Conference for Trade and Development in Geneva, UNCTAD, as well as the Assistant Director-General at the Central Statistics Office (CSO) in Ireland and was a member of the Oversight Board of the new Irish Government Economic and Evaluation Service. He established the “Professional Diploma in Official Statistics & Policy Evaluation” at the Institute of Public Administration in Ireland and played a central role in launching the ISLP competition in Ireland. He has published over a dozen papers in peer reviewed journals covering a range of topics including family business, cross-border shopping, productivity, tourism, input-output, regional policy and data infrastructure.

Walter Radermacher is Honorary Professor of the Institute for Statistics of the Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich. He is also Chair of the Advisory Board on Ethics of the International Statistical Institute (ISI) and President of the Federation of European National Statistical Societies (FENStatS). He studied business economics in Aachen and Münster and obtained his PhD in Statistical Sciences from Sapienza University, Rome. From 1975, he was member of the academic staff in economic mathematics and operations research at the University of Münster. He started his career at the Federal Statistical Office of Germany in 1978. During the nineties, he set up the environmental economic accounting which brought him wide international acknowledgement. In 2003, Walter Radermacher is named Vice-president of the Federal Statistical Office and became its President in 2006.