PROGRAMME COMMITTEE
Claudia Junker, Co-chair
Claudia Junker is leading the unit “Quality management and government finance statistics” since 1 July 2017. Before that she led the unit on “Statistical cooperation” at Eurostat, since 2010, involved in statistical cooperation and provision of technical assistance to third countries with a focus on the countries having or willing to apply to become an EU member state, countries in the European neighbourhood to the East and the South and African countries. Cooperation activities include the implementation of assessments of statistical systems, provision of expertise to NSIs in order to apply European and/or international standards in the production of official statistics, management of funds to engage such expertise, publication of data on these countries and reporting on progress. Claudia also worked in business statistics and was leading the evaluation activities of Eurostat. Prior to joining Eurostat in 1999 she worked in the Statistical Office of Germany in the area of national accounts / input-output tables and managed a wide range of technical assistance projects and training programmes for countries in Central Europe and for countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States (former Soviet Union).
Monika Bieniek, Co-chair
She holds a master degree in Economics. She began her work at Statistics Poland in 1996 as an expert on standard classifications. Since 2008, as a deputy director of the Methodology, Standards and Registers Department in Statistics Poland, she is responsible for quality in statistics, coordination in the field of methodological works, metadata and classification standards. She takes part in regular monitoring of implementation of the ES Code of Practice in Statistics Poland and she is involved in implementation of the TQM elements in the organisation. In 2011 she was delegated (for one year) to the Permanent Representation of the RP to the EU in Brussels and worked there as an attaché responsible for preparation of Polish presidency in the Council of the EU in the area of European statistics and as a deputy chair of the Working Group on Statistics in the Council of the EU during Polish presidency. In 2015 she was involved in the ESS peer review as a chair of national coordinator team. She is a member of Director of Methodology Group (DIME), Standards Working Group and Steering Committee QUAL.
Thomas Burg
Thomas Burg holds a master degree in Mathematics achieved at technical university of Vienna. After starting his professional career 1990 in the private sector he joined 1993 Statistics Austria where he gained 15 years-experience as methodological expert. In 2008 he was appointed as quality manager of Statistics Austria and since 2014 he is holding the position as head of the unit Quality Management and Methods. Besides his activities on European level as Austrian representative of the Directors of Methodology Group (DIME) and the Working Group Quality he was involved in the Task Force developing the 2nd round of Peer Reviews. He acted as project leader and co-chair of the program committee when Statistics Austria and Eurostat organized the European Conference on Quality in Statistics in Vienna 2014 (Q2014) and was a member of the program committee for the conferences in Helsinki (Q2010) and Madrid (Q2016).
Agustín Cañada
Agustín Cañada is since 2013 Director of the “Unit of Quality and Good Practices for the Official Statistics” at the National Statistical Institute (INE) of Spain and as such, he was Co-Chair of the Programme Committee and Chair of the Local Committee for the European Conference on Quality of European Statistics 2016 (Q2016). He began his work at the National Institute of Statistics in 1986, after passing the competitive exams to the Higher Body of State Statisticians. Between 1987 and 2008 he was Deputy Director of the National Accounts Department at INE. He has also worked (2009-2012) at the Regional Statistics Office of Madrid, as Technical Advisor of Economic Statistics and Regional Accounts. He is a Founder Member of the Committee of Statistics and Satellite Account of the UN World Tourism Organization (UNWTO). He has published several books and scientific articles on National Accounts, Input-output and Tourism Statistics. He co-authored the first Edition of the Eurostat I-O Handbook and authored the methodology of the Regional Tourism Satellite Account of the UNWTO. He holds a PhD in economics and he is currently associate Professor of economics at the Autonomous University of Madrid.
Tasos Christofides
Tasos C. Christofides is a Professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics of the University of Cyprus. He completed his Ph.D. in Mathematical Sciences at Johns Hopkins University in 1987, under the supervision of Professor Robert Serfling. From 1987 until 1991 he was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mathematical Sciences at the State University of New York at Binghamton. In 1991 he joined the newly founded University of Cyprus and the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, becoming its first Chairman. His areas of expertise include indirect questioning techniques and probability inequalities. He is co-author (with Professor Arijit Chaudhuri) of a recent book on Indirect Questioning Techniques in Sample Surveys (Springer, Heidelberg 2013) and author of a number of papers on randomized response and indirect questioning techniques in general. He has participated in a number of research projects and has provided consulting services for various organizations including the Statistical Service of Cyprus. He serves on various national and international scientific and expert committees, among them, the European Statistical Advisory Committee.
Kari Djerf
I am a survey statistician and have been working at Statistics Finland for more than 30 years, mostly within statistical methodology. The duties also led me to consider quality management issues as quality reporting is one part of our engagement. I have participated in the ESS Working Group on Quality since its establishment in 1998, however, in recent years, mostly following its activities. Similarly I have been a member of the Programme Committees of the ESS Conferences on quality in official statistics since 2006, and in 2010 I acted as the co-chair of the Q2010 ESS Conference in Quality, held in Helsinki. Furthermore, I have been one of the instructors of the ESTP Introductory course in quality management since 2007. I hold elected membership of the International Statistical Institute (ISI) since 2001 and the International Association of Surveys Statisticians (IASS) since 1990.
Mária Dologová
Mária Dologová – Director of Dept. Strategy and Integrated Information System in the Statistical Office of the Slovak Republic. She is responsible for implementation and further development of the QMS in the whole SOSR according to ISO9001 standard, to requirements of the SOSR itself and of other systems and interested parties. Within development of the system she was responsible for the ES Code of Practice integration into the SOSR QMS. She is Management Representative in the area of quality and Quality Manager of the SOSR. M. Dologova is also responsible for the implementation and further development of the strategic management in the SOSR – i.e. for development, implementation and evaluation of the SOSR development strategies.
Krzysztof Jajuga
Professor of economic sciences, lecturer in Wroclaw University of Economics and universities abroad (e.g. Shanghai Jiao Tong University). His research concentrate on finance, risk management as well as econometrics and statistics. He is chairman of Department of Financial Investments and Risk Management and director of Finance Management Institute at Wroclaw University of Economics. He is founder and president of CFA Society Poland. He was member of Scientific Council of National Bank of Poland and member of Supervisory Board of Warsaw Stock Exchange. He advises and cooperates with numerous financial institutions and enterprises. In addition he is chairman of Committee of Statistics and Econometrics of Polish Academy of Sciences, deputy chairman of Committee of Economic Sciences of Polish Academy of Sciences and member of board of Committee of Financial Sciences of Polish Academy of Sciences.
Zsuzsanna Kovacs
Zsuzsanna is leading the Quality Team of Eurostat and she has been active in the field of quality for the past eight years. Before joining Eurostat she worked for other services of the European Commission, the financial sector in Budapest, a multinational company in Paris and a non-profit organisation in Brussels. She is an economist, majored in finances, and holds her degrees from the Corvinus University in Budapest and the University of Passau. She is an (occasional) sailor, and was a long-distance runner and basketball player before.
Jean-Marc Museux
PhD in Physics, Jean-Marc Museux was teaching statistics at the Free University of Brussels and worked at Statistics Belgium till 2001. He joined Eurostat in 2001 as a methodologist, specialised in survey sampling and time series analysis. From 2004 to 2007, he was responsible for the production of Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC). He was appointed Head of Section Methodology from 2007 to 2012. In 2012, he became Chief Enterprise Architect in Eurostat contributing to the modernisation of the European Statistical System. During his carrier he has participated in many international conferences and initiatives among others the UNECE Common Statistical Production Architecture. He was coordinating the development the ESS Enterprise Architecture Reference Framework released in 2015. He is a member of the programme Committee of the Quality Conferences since 2010.
Włodzimierz Okrasa
Professor Włodzimierz Okrasa is a Head of the Research Methods and Evaluation Unit at the Institute of Sociology, Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski University (UKSW); Advisor to the President of the Central Statistical Office and Editor in Chief “Statistics in Transition new series”. In the 70s and 80s he worked in the Polish Academy of Sciences, then in the American universities (1988-1990) and in the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (1990-1991). In 1991-1993 he was a Program Director in the Social Science Research Council, N. Y. He then worked at the World Bank in Washington, DC (1994-2000), including modernization of household surveys in ‘countries in transition’. Next (2000-2003) he headed the Department of Social Sciences at the European Science Foundation. Elected member of the International Statistical Institute; Vice-President of the Polish Statistical Association; In the years 2009-2014 Evaluator of the EC Framework Program (FP7) and a member of the OECD Accession Group.
Jean-Pierre Poncelet
Jean-Pierre Poncelet has an academic background in Management, Economics, Accounting and Tax matters. Most of his professional career has been spent in various public organisations at national and European level. He is currently Head of the unit “Statistics for administrative purposes” in Eurostat. He previously headed the unit “Quality, Government Finance Statistics” and was co-chair of the programme committee for the 2016 Quality Conference, which was organised together with INE Spain. He also headed the private office of Eurostat’s Director General for almost five years, from 2010 to 2014.
Marina Signore
She has been responsible for Istat’s quality policy and chief of Division on “Metadata, Quality and R&D projects” for several years. At present, she is Advisor to the Director of the newly established Data Collection Directorate. She has been a member of High level groups on quality at the international and European level contributing to the shaping of international quality frameworks and tools. She has been scientific coordinator of e-Frame project “European framework for measuring well-being” under the EU FP7 programme. She is the chair of the UNECE Supporting Standards Group for the modernisation of official statistics. She is the project coordinator of the MIMOD project (Mixed Mode Designs for Social Surveys) to enhance cooperation and quality in multi-mode data collection, which is currently under evaluation by Eurostat.
Maria João Zilhão
Maria João Zilhão, Director of the Planning, Control and Quality Unit at Statistics Portugal (INE), has been involved in Quality Management at the ESS since 1999, and member of several groups having participated in the LEG on Quality Group and on the Sponsorship on Quality. She has also been involved in the preparation of European quality tools such as the ESS QAF. She has been a trainer in the field of quality in statistics at ESS level since 2001, and has also experience in international cooperation in the area of systematic quality management. She has been a member of the Programme Committee in previous editions of the European Quality Conference.