June 2026 Fireside Chat
Event Summary
On 24 June 2026, Data for Policy hosted its latest Fireside Chat, Democracy Dies in Darkness without Official Statistics, featuring Dr Luca Di Gennaro Splendore (University of Malta, former Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow) in conversation with Professor Sarah Giest (Professor of Public Policy, Leiden University and Area 1 Lead Editor of Data & Policy), who chaired the session.
Drawing on comparative and quantitative research spanning more than 160 countries, alongside over 20 years of professional experience with the UN, EU institutions and national statistical offices, Dr Di Gennaro Splendore examined a deceptively simple question: who governs the data on which modern democracies increasingly depend?
The session presented evidence of a strong correlation — around 70% — between the Economist’s Democracy Index and the World Bank’s Statistical Performance Indicators, a pattern that holds across every continent, with ongoing work establishing a causal relationship between democratic strength and statistical performance. The discussion then turned to how institutional arrangements shape data governance: the coordination challenges of federal statistical systems, illustrated by Argentina publishing two different official inflation figures; the conflict of interest that arises when central banks produce inflation and GDP statistics, as is common across South America; and Lithuania’s pioneering transformation of its national statistical office into a state data agency.
Looking ahead, the conversation explored what national statistical offices might become over the next two decades — from institutions built to address post-war data scarcity to guardians of trust in an era of data abundance, citizen-generated data and AI.
The audience Q&A covered differential privacy in census exercises, the human element behind official statistics, and whether trust in official statistics can reinforce trust in democratic institutions.
About the Speaker:
Luca Di Gennaro Splendore is a researcher at the University of Malta and a former Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow, working on the relationship between democratic governance and the quality of official statistics. His research uses panel econometrics and causal inference to examine how institutional design, from central bank versus NSO data production to federal statistical systems and citizen data co-production, shapes statistical performance worldwide. He has over 20 years of experience across UN agencies, EU institutions, and national statistical offices.
Sarah Giest is a Professor of Public Policy with a focus on Innovation and Sustainability at the Public Administration Institute of Leiden University. She has been developing an interdisciplinary research agenda and teaching on using a policy lens to look at technical, environmental and social solutions that shape sustainable societies.