National Institute of Statistics and Census of Argentina

National Statistics and Censuses Institute (Spanish: Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Censos, INDEC) is the Argentine government agency responsible for the collection and processing of statistical data. The institute also analyses economical and social indicators such as inflation rate, consumer price index and unemployment, among others.

Functions
The INDEC is supervised by different federal agencies, and is under the direct oversight of the Secretaría de Programación Económica y Regional (Secretariat of Economic and Regional Planning) of the Ministerio de Economía y Producción (Ministry of Economy and Production, MECON).

The INDEC also coordinates the Sistema Estadístico Nacional (National Statistics' System, SEN) under principles of normative centralization and governmental division. In the SEN works together national, provincial and local statistical services, and in each province there is a statistics bureau called Dirección de Estadística dependent of the provincial government, that takes and processes information.

Censuses in Argentina are officially held every 10 years. Performed censuses have been in 1869, 1895, 1914, 1947, 1960, 1970, 1980, 1991 (delayed for budget problems) and 2001.

In-between censuses the information is permanently updated with the sampled Encuesta Permanente de Hogares (Permanent Homes' Survey). Official complete reports are delivered every 6 months.

History
The first national statistics' centre was the Dirección General de Estadística (General Directorate of Statistics), established in 1894 as a division of the Ministry of Public Finances. Fifty years later, in 1944, the Consejo Nacional de Estadística y Censos (National Council of Statistics and Censuses) was created, with dependencies on both the Ministry of the Interior and the National Presidential Office. Other agencies were later formed in 1950, 1952, and 1956 before the final creation of the Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Censos in 1968 by Law 17622 and Decrees 3110/70 and 1831/93.

Data manipulation
A conflict raised within the organism when the government of President Néstor Kirchner replaced Gabriela Bevacqua, the Consumer Prices Indicator director (Índice de Precios al Consumidor - IPC) with an external functionary, after an inflation report of 1.5% for January 2007. The head of the INDEC later resigned, and a new directory was placed by the Ministery of Economy and several employees manifested their discontent for what they saw as a violation of INDEC's authonomy, and a manouver of the Minister of Economy under Felisa Miceli to illigally keep inflation indicators under one percent.