Computing with data is at the hart activity of the statistical office. Yet, the area of technical computing often falls between the two stools of data analysts and IT developers. In this paper we analyze the importance of computational skills in the Generic Statistical Business Process Model. Next, we give an overview of computational topics that are of importance to the statistical office. Many of these skills turn out to be of highly technical nature. After this, we try to provoke a wider discussion on the role of technical computing by 1) introducing the role of the Research Software Engineer into the field of official statistics and 2) propose a six semester bachelor’s curriculum in official statistics.
