The President of the NSI participated in the first meeting of the Bureau of the OECD Committee on Statistics for the year

On 5 March 2026 in New York, the President of the NSI. Assoc. Prof. Atanas Atanasov, PhD took part in the first meeting for the year of the Bureau of the Committee of Statistics and Statistical Policy of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). At the end of last year, Mr. Atanasov was elected as a member of the Bureau for the 2026 mandate, together with the Presidents and Directors-General of the National Statistical Offices of Norway, the Netherlands, Australia, Canada, Estonia, Mexico and Eurostat. After the election procedure, according to the OECD Rules of Procedure, Assoc. Prof. Atanasov became the first member of the Bureau as a representative from a candidate country for membership to the OECD.

The members of the Bureau discussed and approved the agenda and organisation of the upcoming annual meeting of the Committee on Statistics, which will take place in June at the OECD Headquarters in Paris. The interaction between official statistics and artificial intelligence and ensuring quality of official statistics when implementing AI in the process of producing statistical data, the challenges of conducting social surveys and household interviews, as well as measuring financing of environmentally sustainable activities, emerged as the main topics for the upcoming meeting of the Committee.

Prior to the meeting of the Bureau, Assoc. Prof. Atanasov held a bilateral meeting with Ms. Romina Boarini, Director of the OECD Centre on Well-Being, Inclusion, Sustainability and Equal Opportunity (WISE). WISE’s main task is to generate new data and policy approaches to improve people’s well-being and reduce inequalities by tracking how human well-being is affected by environmental, digital and demographic transitions. During the meeting, Assoc. Prof. Atanasov presented the experience of the NSI in collecting indicators for measuring well-being as part of the monitoring of the implementation of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Opportunities for deepening the cooperation between the two institutions were also discussed.