FENStatS Newsletter - Q2/2025

edited by Jaione Etxeberria

Dear FENStatS Members,

I recently sent you a letter to consider the support of your society to the ISI statement on United States Federal Statistics, asking for kindly knowing your society’s position.

The ISI expressed concerns about current developments in the US that will also affect international cooperation between scientists in statistics and data sciences in a wide range of applications, and political decision-making based on high-quality statistical evidence.

This newsletter serves to announce that the FENStatS Executive Committee explicitly supports the ISI statement, aligning with the Professional Ethics for Statistical Practice in Europe. This commitment has, to date, also garnered the support of the following European Statistical Societies: ÖSG (Austria), RSSB (Belgium), CSA (Croatia), CSS (Cyprus), FSS (Finland), SFdS (France), DStatG (Germany), SIS (Italy), SLS (Luxembourg), SEIO (Spain), SSFr (Sweden) and RSS (UK).

With warm regards to all members of our societies,

Lola Ugarte
FENStatS President

FENStatS General Assembly: Save the date!

FENStatS is pleased to announce that its next General Assembly will be held during the 65th ISI World Statistics Congress in the Hague. This will be a hybrid assembly, allowing for both in-person and virtual attendance.

The assembly is scheduled for Oct 7, 2025, from 12:30 to 13:55, in Room Asia.

FENStatS Accreditation

The Executive Committee of FENStatS has decided to prioritize the accreditation of statisticians.
The accreditation system is ready for all FENStatS' national associations, but further work is needed. France and Luxembourg are the latest national associations to join FENStatS' two-tier accreditation system.

Magnus Pettersson, who is leading the project on behalf of FENStatS, was invited to the SFdS (Société Française de Statistique) annual conference in Marseille, where he gave a presentation alongside Ron Wasserstein from ASA and Guillaume Desachy from SFdS.

The aim of accreditation is to provide a common European standard that defines the profession of statistician. It is a recognition that the accredited person has sufficient experience and merits to guarantee his/her competence to work as statistician in an independent and professional manner. It is also intended as an encouragement for statisticians to develop their roles, stand by ethical standards, specifically those outlined in the FENStatS Professional Ethics for Statistical Practice in Europe.

The next step in the accreditation project is to encourage more national associations to participate and to increase the number of applicants from those already eligible. We need ambassadors, auditors—and, of course—applicants.

One specific focus is junior statisticians: those who have graduated but lack the required five years of work experience. They are now offered a "junior accreditation", which allows them to open an applicant account and begin recording their professional development.

Being a statistician is a challenging but increasingly vital profession.
We must clearly express the requirements necessary to meet the challenges of being a statistician and emphasize the unique nature of our profession.

More information on accreditation and application form can be found on the FENStatS website.

Magnus Pettersson
FENStatS Accreditation Committee

FENStatS Conference: Save the date!

FENStatS is excited to announce that we're making great progress in organizing our first joint conference with the Italian Statistical Society and our local hosts.

Our Scientific Committee is almost finalized, and we're looking forward to an excellent event!

Please mark the event in your calendars and share this announcement with your members: The conference will be held in Rome at the University of La Sapienza from June 22nd to 25th, 2026.

Sessions co-organized by FENStatS

!Forthcoming!
ISI World Statistics Congress 2025

A special session co-organized by FENStatS is being proposed for the upcoming 65th ISI World Statistics Congress 2025, scheduled for Oct 7, 2025, from 14:00 to 15:40 in Room Amazon.

The session, entitled “IPS 885: Bridging Academia and Official Statistics: Examples of European Experience", is organized by Anne Ruiz-Gazen and will be discussed by Camelia Goga. It will feature presentations from leading experts across Europe, showcasing successful collaborations between academic institutions and national statistical offices.

Presentations will include:

Useful liaisons to face small area estimation needs in Italy: The case of social inclusion
by Maria Giovanna Ranalli

Small area estimation with geospatial data. Lessons from collaborative work with the World Bank and the UK Office for National Statistics
by Nikolaos Tzavidis

Collaboration between the Swiss Federal Statistical Office and the University of Neuchâtel
by Yves Tillé

The Romanian experience: Building effective collaborations between academia and official Statistics
by Ana-Maria Ciuhu (Dobre)

SEIO 2025

A special session co-organized by FENStatS and SEIO took place during the XLI National Congress of Statistics and Operations Research and the XV Conference on Public Statistics, celebrated in Lleida, Spain, from June 10 to 13, 2025.

The session, entitled “FENStatS-SEIO: Statistics and Data Science”, was moderated by María Dolores Martínez Miranda, the incoming president of SEIO, and featured representatives from several European statistical societies.

The session incorporated a total of five presentations:

A data-driven calibration for a non-asymptotic kernel two-sample test
by P. Lacroix, B. Michel, F. Picard, V. Rivoirard

A regression model on distributional data in a context of functional data analysis through an appropriate LDQ transformation
R. Verde, A. Balzanella, G. Borrata

Advances in count time series: Addressing zero inflation and structural breaks in INAR models
by I. Pereira, M. Monteiro

Functional relevance based on the continuous Shapley value
by P. Delicado, C. Pachón García

Bounds for the regression parameters in dependently censored survival models
by I. Willems, J. Beyhum, I. Van Keilegom

News from National Statistical Societies

Spanish Statistical Society

SEIO is excited to launch “AVATAR: Discovering Statistics in Dataland”, a competition for Secondary Education and Vocational Training students to spark interest in Statistics and Data Science. The contest has three phases: regional competitions held independently by each autonomous community, a national competition co-organized by SEIO for regional winners, and an international phase through the International Statistical Literacy Project (ISLP). Started in 2024, AVATAR unites regional, national, and international efforts to promote statistical literacy. The competition is coordinated nationally by Professor María Jesús García-Ligero (University of Granada).

Additionally, FENStatS president and SEIO 2024 medal recipient Lola Ugarte also presented an invited talk on “Disease Mapping: Empowering Public Health with Spatial Insights” during a special medal session in the SEIO conference.

Royal Statistical Society

The RSS honorary officer for public statistics, Paul Allin has written a blog regarding the scrutiny of the UK's statistical system and the role of the Royal Statistical Society in supporting members in UK government statistics and championing the voice of statistics users. More information about "Reflections on the scrutiny of the UK's statistical system and future proofing the profession" awaits here.

The RSS has also launched a new initiative, with the UK's Government Statistical Service on future proofing the profession. What are the challenges and opportunities not just for the next couple of years but in the next decade for the profession? More information can be read after clicking on the link.

Spanish Biostatistic Society (SEB)

The SEB Young Researchers’ Conference, organized by students for students, will be held from January 28–30, 2026, in Bilbao, Spain. Now in its 8th edition, the event aims to provide supportive space for young scientists to present their research and exchange ideas. Oral and poster presentations are welcome in English, Spanish, or Portuguese, with slides required in English. A social event and dinner will also be held. Registration is free for all Bachelor’s, Master’s, and PhD students.

More information will be available soon on the conference website.

Statistical Society of Slovenia

In the first half of 2025, the Slovenian Coordination of the International Statistical Literacy Project (ISLP) and Statistical Society of Slovenia, with the support of the Statistical Office of the Republic of Slovenia and the Petrol Group, completed the first year of the Slovenian national poster competition for secondary school students. Winners from both the lower and upper secondary categories will represent Slovenia in the 2024–2025 ISLP Poster Competition, with results announced at the 65th ISI World Statistics Congress in October 2025.

Additionally, the 2025 Statistical Day with Researchers was held on June 4, 2025, showcasing five research papers using data from the Statistical Office of Slovenia, aiming to promote statistical data use in research. For further information, visit the website.

Finally, the 8th European Statistics Competition concluded successfully, with 1,370 Slovenian upper secondary students participating and four national teams advancing to the European finals. More information about the results is available here at this link

Finnish Statistical Society

The Finnish Statistical Society organized the annual Statistical Days conference on June 9 to 10, 2025, at the University of Tampere. It was an honour to welcome Professor Jörn-Steffen Pischke (London School of Economics) as the keynote speaker, along with 9 other brilliant speakers.

The Society is also currently hosting a national postgraduate course at the University of Tampere on the topic of Causal Inference lectured by Professor Juha Karvanen (University of Jyväskylä).

Italian Statistical Society

Società Italiana di Statistica invites for three conferences organized throughout 2025 in Italy:

IES 2025 - Innovation & Society: Statistics and Data Science for Evaluation and Quality. Bressanone. June 25-26, 2025.

SIS DIAS 2025 - Future of Sustainability. Bari. September 11-12, 2025.

GRASPA 2025 - Envitonmental Statistics. Rome. September 15-17, 2025.

All information is available on the conference websites.