In search of the data revolution: Has the official statistics paradigm shifted?

Abstract

What distinguishes revolution from evolution? What events or movements in the world of official statistics have been sufficiently disruptive or transformational to deserve being called revolutionary? Using the definitions of data revolution put forward by the Independent Expert Advisory Group on a Data Revolution for Sustainable Development in their report A World that Counts to identify potential data revolutions and then deriving a framework to evaluate those definitions from Thomas Kuhn’s work The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, this paper investigates, through the lens of official statistics, whether there has been a data revolution or not.