Transition to a market economy has generated increasing importance of both data and analytical statistical tools for business and government. Profound economic reforms changed the underestimated role of statistics under central planning and evidenced the need to use it more actively as basis for carrying out national policy and strategies in all economic sectors. In addition the process of accession of Bulgaria to the European Union requires the harmonization of legislation concerned with statistics and compliance of basic statistical surveys with the EU standards and the main EU policies. As a result during the last 10 years noticeable changes in the organization and methodology of official statistics took place in Bulgaria. This process has been facilitated by the advances in Information Technology (IT). The IT revolution and the Internet in particular has greatly increased the feasibility of easy communication of huge data sets at all levels of summary and enriches the opportunities to apply the sophisticated tools associated with large data sets.
The CAUSE Research Group is supported in part by a member initiative grant from the American Statistical Association’s Section on Statistics and Data Science Education