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Business Architecture (BA) is called to play a central role in a programme as complex as that of modernisation and standardisation of the official statistical information production. This study aims at illustrating a BA model for achieving a unity of views, so as to ensure the strategic alignment in each part of an Organisation and to carry out an innovation consistent with the standardisation objective that should be reached. This BAmodel individuates four different business lines (Strategy; Corporate support; Production; Capability) and is led by common infrastructures and principles that become instruments and guidelines for the implementation of each business line group of actions. Both principles and infrastructures facilitate and enhance the standardisation process.

The Italian National Institute of Statistics has recently adopted the common vision proposed for the European Statistic al System, envisaging a different production process of the statistical information, based on its standardisation and industrialisation, thus achieving higher efficiency and quality levels together with lower respondent burden. In order to ensure a proper governance of the transition process, a rigorous definition of the “to be” model is needed: for this purpose, Istat has defined a Business Architecture model, clearly stating the characteristics of the statistical value chain, the way the activities in the different domains interact, the general principles informing the whole process, and the infrastructures required so as to ensure its optimality.

In recent years, many European and international statistical organisations have initiated developments to restructure their statistical production process, with the aim of improving its efficiency and the ability to produce outputs that better satisfy user needs. In this framework, the main topic of this study is to describe the path towards the design of a Business Architecture (BA) suitable to meet the specific requisites of the Italian National Institute of Statistics (Istat). Like other National Statistical Institutes, for several years Istat has been engaged in a series of complex challenges, dictated on the one hand by the requirement to increase the production of statistical information and its quality, on the other hand by the need to reduce both the total cost for its production and the respondent burden, so as to work in a more efficient and optimised way. In order to find proper solutions and increase the overall efficiency, since 2010 Istat has launched a Programme called Stat2015, that is focused on the modernisation of the whole statistical production procedure.