About DGINS

DGINS stands for “Directeurs-généraux des Intstituts Nationaux de la Statistique”. The first DGINS meeting was held in 1953, and in those times it acted as the predecessor of the present Statistical Programme Committee (SPC). Originally the Directors-General met twice a year. In 1989, at the 72nd DGINS meeting, it was decided to create the Statistical Programme Committee (SPC).

The DGINS Conferences nevertheless continued to be organised but with a slightly different focus. Nowadays the DGINS Conference is held once a year in one of the Member States with the aim of discussing topics related to the statistical programme in an informal way. The head of the host country's national statistical institute acts as chairperson.

The host country draws up the programme together with Eurostat. The DGINS meetings are, in fact, informal, high-level conferences which provide an opportunity to discuss current strategic issues in statistics.

A new mandate for the DGINS Conference was adopted by the SPC at its meeting on 22-23 November 2000, indicating the present objectives, tasks and functions of the Conference. According to this document, the specific objectives of the DGINS Conference are defined as:

This year’s DGINS Conference entitled ‘The ESS response to globalisation – are we doing enough?’ will be held in Budapest, Hungary, from 20 to 21 September 2007.

The last DGINS Conferences covered the following topics:

Year Location Theme
1996 Vienna Statistical business registers: problems and opportunities
1997 Helsinki Information society and statistics
1998 Stockholm Quality work and quality assurance within statistics
1999 The Hague Statistics, a challenge for the future
2000 Porto Information and knowledge – The role of statistics
2001 Madrid Strategic planning in the context of enlargement
2002 Palermo The future of the European Statistical System
2003 Athens Social Statistics in the enlarged EU
2004 Paris Short term indicators: priority assessment, quality, revisions and timeliness
2005 Copenhagen The Challenge of communicating statistics
2006 Cracow Making the system work
2007 Budapest The ESS response to globalisation – are we doing enough?