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In 2017, the Italian national statistical office (ISTAT) set up a statistical working group composed of representatives of relevant ministries, local administrations and civil society organisations to foster inter-institutional cooperation in the collection and use of data on Roma, Sinti and Caminanti minorities.
Italy set up this working group as one of the measures implementing its national Roma integration strategy under the EU’s Framework for National Roma Integration Strategies.
There is a current lack of reliable and comprehensive data on the Roma people. There are also legal constraints on collecting statistics on ethnicity.
Therefore, the main purpose of the working group is to reach an agreement on possible methodologies and scope of data collection which could help improve the situation. The underlying rationale is that the participation of Roma organisations will trigger greater trust in the data and more willingness to participate in data collection processes.
In the medium-term, the statistical working group aims at providing a hub that maps existing data from official and non-official sources on the living conditions of Roma people and makes them available to a wider audience. Official sources are provided by the National Institute of Statistics or ministries or local administrations; they are produced according to high quality standards.
Non-official sources are produced mainly by civil society organisations but not for statistical purposes (e.g. main result of a European project made up by private organisations).
The statistical group holds periodical meetings to foster cooperation between public sector and civil society organisations, both at the local and national level. It is composed of representatives from ISTAT, relevant ministries, the Italian Equality Body (UNAR), local administrations and Roma community organisations.
The main activities of the group consist of: dialogue with and participation of Roma representatives; information exchange on good practices for data collection and dissemination; and drafting and publishing guidelines on data collection on Roma.
The guidelines will be addressed to ministries, local administrations and civil society organisations involved in the collection of the data on Roma, Sinti and Caminanti minorities. They will also concern the harmonisation of metadata to devise common definitions for statistical research.
Furthermore, work is ongoing to set up an online platform for sharing the main statistical data available at the national and local level, links to official documents at the European and national levels (Framework for National Roma Integration Strategies, European commission communication, No.173/2011, F.R.A, Working party on Roma integration monitoring.
Italian national statistical office (ISTAT) / Istituto Nazionale di StatisticaNadia Nur / Valeria De MartinoEmail: tavolostatrsc (at) istat (dot) it