Why and how to improve competence descriptions and evaluations in a statistical institute?

The production of official statistics is based on a diversity of skills and competences ranging from technical and practical skills to specialised skills in IT or mathematical statistics. However, we have not always been identifying and describing these competences in a systematic way. In a situation where we are facing both internal and external challenges we need to address this issue in order to ensure that we recruit the right people and that we provide targeted training. On the internal side we are facing new requirements linked to changing technology and working methods combined with a loss of experienced staff due to retirement in the coming years. The external challenges are linked to a situation where the persons we recruit have more diversified background and we are not sure that numeric skills always are at a sufficient level. We will also need to better specify the training and competences we expect from those recruited in order to handle the day to day operations of data collection, control, editing, documentation and dissemination. The paper will describe how Statistics Norway has been working on a framework for competence description, closely related to the present business model. Some experiences from competence mapping in practice will also be explained, and how training needs better can be identified.

Related Subject(s): International Trade and Finance