Outro

We believe every national statistical office can take achievable small steps to improve their data publishing. And that these small steps can greatly help their data users. This could be publishing better spreadsheets, or dataset contact details, creating an API, or better metadata.

Fact checkers can be even more engaged users of national statistics data. Going beyond users of data, they can tell NSOs what data publishing improvements they’d hope to see and how this would help their fact checking. And continuing to improve the understanding and trust between the NSO and the fact checking community.

By improving their data literacy, fact checkers can know what to ask for from NSOs. They can do this by looking at data publishing from other NSOs, or best practices from other domains. This raises their awareness of what is possible and can serve as useful examples of what NSOs can provide.

As avid users of NSO data, fact checkers should be seen as a valuable resource to show the importance of well-maintained national statistical data. The more fact checkers can rely on NSOs to help with questions about data, the more impact they’ll have in fighting misinformation. And the more positive impacts NSOs will have on society.