The New South Wales Branch of the Statistical Society of Australia invites you to a presentation titled Challenges and Advances in Official Statistics with speakers from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) and University of Technology Sydney (UTS).
Date: Wednesday 22 April 2026
Times (AEST):
- 5:30pm - 6:00pm - Light Refreshments
- 6:00pm - 7:30pm - Talks and Discussion
- 7:30pm onwards - Dinner (see further details below)
Venue: UNSW Business School 220 Google Map
In person only event
Note that attending the dinner requires a separate RSVP - please register prior to the event.
Speakers (in alphabetical order) - Bios and Abstracts:
Prof. James Brown, University of Technology Sydney
Dr James Brown OBE is Professor of Official Statistics and Head of Mathematical Sciences Discipline at University of Technology Sydney. He has nearly 30 years of experience collaborating with national statistical agencies, particularly in measuring population census coverage and adjusting census outputs for coverage errors. His work has included collaborations on the UK censuses for 2001 and 2011, Scotland’s census for 2022, and New Zealand’s census for 2018 and 2023. He is the current chair of National Records Scotland’s Methods Steering Group for census, a member of ABS Methodology Advisory Committee, a member of ATO’s Tax Gap Panel, and working with Office for National Statistics (UK) on its transformed labour force survey program. More widely, he collaborates across disciplines, including his work with Health+Law on the first legal needs survey for those living with HIV and Hepatitis B.
Title: A journey of collaboration to count the population
We have all probably at some point filled in a census form. But how does a country’s National Statistics Organisation (NSO), ABS for Australia, understand if they have actually done a high quality count? This talk will cover a near 30 year journey doing research and collaborating with NSOs in UK, Australia, and New Zealand to provide tools to answer that question, finishing with a reflection on the future of census.
Dr. Anders Holmberg, Australian Bureau of Statistics
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Dr. Anders Holmberg is the Chief Methodologist at the Australian Bureau of Statistics since 2019. He has a PhD in Statistics about model assisted survey planning, and a background working with various official statistics in many different countries including Sweden, Cambodia, New Zealand and Norway. He has been a member of Eurostat's Directors of Methodology group and is still a member of the Methodology Advisory boards of Statistics Netherlands and Statistics Sweden. As a practitioner he has worked with the design and collection of sample survey data, the use of multiple administrative data sources data about people, businesses, and properties for statistical and research purposes. As Chief Methodologist he was responsible for the methods in Sweden’s first register-based Census and as one of the statisticians he contributed to building Statistics Sweden's data laboratory for research and data integration MONA, (Microdata ONline Access).
Title: Critical and interesting methodological problems in official statistics
The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) is Australia’s largest producer of official statistics and responsible for key economic indicators, the Population and Housing Census and other statistics about various topics. The methodology which underpins this statistics production is transparent, guided by scientifically defensible principles and in line with international practices. In this talk I will present the core processes of the ABS’s business and illustrate how these are supported by a wide variety of applications of statistical and data science methods. There will be illustrations of new solutions to classic problems in the survey sampling area and how data intensive and data dependent operations are used to improve the quality of the statistics and provide better conditions to make data analysis.
Ika Yuni Wulansari, University of Technology Sydney
Ika a PhD candidate in statistics at the University of Technology Sydney, a statistician at BPS Statistics Indonesia, and an Assistant Professor of statistics at Politeknik Statistika STIS, an academic institution under BPS. Her research and professional work focus on small area estimation, survey methodology, and methods for working with small sample data, with the aim of strengthening official statistics and informing policy in Indonesia. She also serves as Indonesia’s country representative for the International Statistical Institute (ISI) Committee on Women in Statistics (CW ISI).
Title: Advancing small area statistics in Indonesia
Producing reliable official statistics in Indonesia requires working across a large and diverse archipelagic setting, where geographic fragmentation, regional diversity, and uneven data availability can make local level estimation particularly challenging. This talk introduces BPS Statistics Indonesia and its broader statistical ecosystem, including the roles of Politeknik Statistika STIS in research and development and of Pusdiklat BPS in staff training and human resource development. Against this background, the talk discusses the growing need for reliable small domain statistics and introduces small area estimation in general terms as a relevant approach when direct estimates are limited. It also briefly notes recent developments within BPS, including the 2025 release of the Small Area Estimation Governance and Framework, and reflects on how strengthening small area estimation depends not only on statistical need, but also on institutional support through research, development, and training.
Any questions, please contact: secretary.nswbranch@statsoc.org.au
@StatSocAus
