EMCDDA internal statistics code of practice

One of the three core principles of the EMCDDA 2013–15 strategy is a commitment to efficiency. This is to be achieved, among others, via an improved quality assurance framework for the statistical procedures employed by the agency. In this light, an EMCDDA Internal statistics code of practice was developed in 2014. The code was drawn up in consultation with the EMCDDA Scientific Committee, the Reitox network and Eurostat, whose European statistics code of practice formed the basis of the work, and adopted by the EMCDDA Management Board.

The EMCDDA code establishes a set of principles that provide the agency with guidance and objectives for its own work. It serves as a declaration of the EMCDDA’s intent to pursue a programme of continuous improvement and evaluation of efforts in order to provide ‘factual, objective, reliable and comparable information’. The EMCDDA code, in line with Eurostat’s, is based on 15 principles covering: the institutional environment; statistical production processes; and the output of statistics. A set of statements on good practice for each of the principles provides guidance for the implementation of the code.