The conference, which is called DGINS, is held once a year in the different EU countries. The theme of the conference in 2005 is "The Challenge of Communicating Statistics" and is to be held on 26-27 May 2005 at Eigtveds Pakhus in Copenhagen.

The participants of the conference are Directors General of the statistical offices in the 25 EU Member States, the candidate countries, EFTA countries, together with other high-level persons within the international statistical sphere.

Brief history of the conference:
When the heads of the national statistical institutes of the Member States of the European Communities started to hold joint meetings in 1953, these gradually became known as DGINS - an abbreviation of the official French name: "Conférence des Directeurs Généraux des Instituts Nationales de la Statistique".

Later on when the Statistical Programming Committee, SPC, was founded and became a comitology committee in 1989, the DGINS meetings were maintained as a kind of separate, conference-like, summit meetings. Today, they are held once a year in connection with the second SPC meeting of the year. They are held in a specified member state and the head of the host country's national statistical institute is chairing the conference. The host country draws up the programme of the conference, together with Eurostat. The DGINS meetings are, in fact, informal and indicative high-level conferences.

Latest developments:
At its third meeting on 13 April 2000, the Partnership Group discussed the need for a renewal of the mandate for the DGINS Conference and decided to carry out a hearing among the heads of the NSIs. The outcome of the hearing revealed that it was the general position of the SPC that the DGINS Conference would also in the future serve a unique purpose in several respects.

The DGINS Conferences had already served a unique purpose in relation to the candidate countries - which participated since 1998 - and it was expected that the conference in the future would serve as an instrument in the process of anticipating future challenges of the European Statistical System. Furthermore, the existence of a common ESS framework was seen as a distinguishing feature, allowing this forum to serve a specific purpose in the development of the ESS, and in the context of the European Union it was expected to add a comparative advantage compared to other international conferences.

A new mandate for the DGINS Conference was adopted by the SPC at its meeting on 22-23 November 2000, indicating the present objective, task and function of the conference (See the DGINS mandate as approved by the SPC on 22-23 Nov. 2000.doc). 

Themes of DGINS Conferences over the last decade:

	Year	Location	Theme
May	1995	Meersburg	Strengthening of the European Statistical System
May	1996	Viennna	Statistical business registers: problems and opportunities
May	1997	Helsinki	Information society and statistics
June	1998	Stockholm	Quality work and quality assurance within statistics
May	1999	The Hague	Statistics, a challenge for the future
May	2000	Porto	Information and knowledge - The role of statistics
May	2001	Madrid	Strategic planning in the context of enlargement
Sept.	2002	Palermo	The future of the European Statistical System
Sept.	2003	Athens	Social Statistics in the enlarged EU
Sept.	2004	Paris	Short term indicators: priority assessment, quality, revisions and timeliness
May	2005	Copenhagen	The Challenge of Communicating Statistics