Message from the President

The National Statistics Center (NSTAC) was established as an incorporated administrative agency in 2003 and has played important role in the central statistical system in Japan under our motto of “For the people, society and the future.”

In recent years, official statistics have attracted great social concern including various criticisms. In May 2017, the government formulated the basic policy of “statistical reform”, and has been promoting various reforms including the revision of the Statistics Act with the Statistics Committee as the control tower.

Based on such a backdrop, NSTAC, while further developing statistical technology cultivated over the years, will accomplish following missions so that official statistics could be truly meaningful and credible to the public.

The first mission of NSTAC is to “Produce Statistics.” NSTAC shall form reliable statistics, with certain technology, such as the population, unemployment rate and consumer price index which becomes the basis for policy making to support the life of the people in Japan. NSTAC will also support the facilitation of useful statistics for policy by each ministry, local governments and so on.

The second mission is to “Exploit Statistics.” In these times of volatile and increasingly complicated socioeconomic environments, NSTAC shall develop and provide information services that enable people to make reasonable decisions utilizing the official statistics. NSTAC will lead open data policy for public information through the provision of the statistical data, as well as support the best practices of statistical data utilization in the society.

The third mission is to “Support Statistics” NSTAC shall develop and operate information systems to support the production of statistics by each ministry, local governments, international organizations and so on.

In order to accomplish these 3 missions, NSTAC is working together with the Statistics Bureau of Japan (SBJ), the Director-General for Policy Planning (Statistical Standards) and each ministry in Japan. In addition, the scope of the work is expanding as the new functions on producing and providing statistics was added to the work in accordance with the revision of the Statistics Act.

It is the accumulation of technology and experience that support NSTAC. NSTAC will work effectively and efficiently by making full use of the latest ICT, AI, and advanced statistical theory. At the same time, NSTAC will also pursue the development of our human resources who will play an essential role in official statistics fields in future.

Furthermore, NSTAC hopes to contribute to the society in official statistics giving further value to the society, cooperating with the central government, local governments, private enterprises, and universities & research organizations. NSTAC believes all people who hold wishes such as making better statistics, and opening up a new possibility by utilizing the statistics more are potential customers of NSTAC.

I offer my cordial thanks for your understanding and continued support for our activities.