Economic Statistics: How to Become Lean and Mean?

The compilation of official statistics has changed dramatically over the past decades, and it will continue to change. These changes not only relate to user demands; also the source data and the means, in the sense of the technologies available for compiling statistics, have undergone and will continue to undergo significant changes. This article addresses the main developments and challenges in relation to the sources for compiling official statistics (input), the technologies for processing data (throughput), and the user demands (output) for official statistics. It is concluded that all these changes have, and continue to have, a significant impact on the way statistics are compiled, and the article puts forward a number of suggestions for the future direction of compiling official statistics.