Kaie Koskaru-Nelk named the new Deputy Director General of Statistics Estonia
In September, Kaie Koskaru-Nelk, former Deputy Secretary General of Fiscal Policy of the Ministry of Finance, will assume office as Deputy Director General of Statistics Estonia. Koskaru-Nelk, who has worked in management positions in the public sector for over 20 years, will be responsible for strategic management of statistical analysis departments and international cooperation.
Mart Mägi, Director General of Statistics Estonia, said that Kaie Koskaru-Nelk has valuable and diverse experience from the areas of government finance and financial analysis. “Statistics Estonia’s role in supporting state governance decisions is expanding. In the next few years, all national development plans will be reviewed, and it is the task of Statistics Estonia to help the state find the right indicators for evaluating progress towards the goals set. As Deputy Secretary General of the Ministry of Finance Koskaru-Nelk was one of the people involved in the development of the activity-based state budget, which is why I believe that her experience will noticeably strengthen our position as a cooperation partner for state governance,” noted Mägi.
A public competition for the position of Deputy Director General of Statistics Estonia was announced in the middle of July. “Considering the summer off period, we were glad that 17 strong candidates from diverse backgrounds ran for the position. It could be said that it was a tough decision,” Mägi added.
Kaie Koskaru-Nelk received a Master’s degree from the University of Tartu in economic theory and foreign trade in 2001. She is studying IT management at Tallinn University, has completed an NLP coaching programme for managers and participated in e-courses of several internationally recognised universities.
Prior to being Deputy Secretary General of the Ministry of Finance, Koskaru-Nelk had worked as the head of Finance Department of the Ministry of Culture, head of State Budget Department of the Ministry of Finance, as a financial analyst and division head at the Ministry of Justice and as a financial analyst at Eesti Pank. In addition, she has chaired the boards of state companies and served as a member of boards and audit committees.
According to Kaie Koskaru-Nelk, working for a long time in the public sector has allowed her to get to know in detail the working principles of the sector, which have been changed when necessary. “As Deputy Secretary General of Fiscal Policy my goal was to increase the importance of knowledge-based decisions in state budget planning. When working towards this goal I came up against several problems: deficiencies in data quality, data disorganisation, unclear responsibility for data, etc. I believe that at Statistics Estonia I can help make a transition, which will result in smarter data management and analysis in Estonia,” commented Koskaru-Nelk.
Statistics Estonia is a government agency. Its main task is to provide objective information on the economic, demographic, social and environmental situation and trends in Estonia. The goal of Statistics Estonia is to become by 2022 the most effective and innovative producer of reliable and user-friendly statistics in Europe.