Statistics Estonia chief apologizes for salary data errors
Statistics Estonia Director General Urmet Lee apologized for publishing incorrect salary data and said the agency will publish the corrected figures next week.
The data, which showed a 13.8 percent on-year increase, was retracted yesterday. The Bank of Estonia estimates it should be around 6 percent.
On Wednesday, it was initially thought the corrected data would be published on Friday, but at 4 p.m. Thursday, the agency pushed it back to next week.
"The publication of corrected average wage data is delayed because the errors in the dataset turned out to be more extensive than initially thought. They cannot be corrected manually and require the creation of new large-scale databases," the agency explained.
Earlier in the day, Statistics Estonia Director General Urmet Lee said the problem was connected with technology.
"I sincerely apologize to everyone that such information was released. We publish a lot of information, and wage statistics are something that directly affects practically every person. Receiving such incorrect information caused a lot of emotions — for some, a spike in blood pressure, for others, goosebumps. I mean in terms of employers, wondering what kind of wage demands employees will now come with. I fully understand the seriousness of this problem and apologize for the confusion we caused," he told Vikerraadio's "Uudis+" program on Thursday.
The director general said part of the problem was the pressure he and the agency's management had placed on staff to meet publication deadlines.
"And often people prioritize that over quality. Today I was once again faced with the situation of whether you want to publish the data tomorrow or you want to publish correct data. I would rather eat my words about publishing tomorrow than put out numbers that need correcting again," Lee said.
Lee added that thanks to this incident, Statistics Estonia has uncovered a very serious problem. He also expressed hope that the incident had not ruined the agency's reputation.
"Wage data is just one indicator out of three thousand that we publish. What we want to do, and what is my intention as director general in communicating with the public, is that even if we make mistakes, we do not hide them. We talk about what happened, what the impacts are, and what we are doing to fix it. In my view, these are the only tools available to us. I dare say that through this kind of communication with the public, we can better understand each other."
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Editor: Helen Wright
Source: Uudis+
