This short piece is based on a larger document about the history of the Regional Directorate of Statistics of Madeira (DREM), which is only available in Portuguese.

The most important events in the history of our organization are:

1966 – National legislation (Decree-Laws No. 46925 and 46926, both of 29th March 1966) allows the creation of INE (Statistics Portugal) delegations in the Azores and in Madeira. INE had been created more than 30 years before under Law No. 1911 of the 25th March 1935. The setting up of delegations in the “adjacent islands” of the Azores and Madeira – as they were known at the time - was only one of the measures of a profound reform of the National Statistical System that took place in 1966.

1967 – The first head of the delegation - transferred from the headquarters of Statistics Portugal in Lisbon to Madeira – sets up an office and hires 4 people to work in the delegation. The need to be closer to the information providers (in order to raise quality) and the development of statistical operations with the goal of obtaining regional data were the main priorities.

1980 – Being an Autonomous Region since 1976, Madeira has, since that year, a Regional Government, that in 1980 took the decision - with the agreement of the central government -to integrate the Funchal Delegation of INE in its organizational structure. Since then, our organization has a double status: it acts as a delegation of Statistics Portugal in relation to nationwide statistics and as a statistical authority in what concerns regional statistics. The organization was registered under the name “Serviço Regional de Estatística da Madeira” (SREM). Areas like agricultural statistics and Regional Accounts were developed greatly during the first years of SREM. During the first half of the 1980’s some of the technicians of SREM travelled to the national institutes of Statistics of France and Spain and received training in a number of statistical domains;

1993 – The name changes to its current form: “Direção Regional de Estatística da Madeira”, which in English means Regional Directorate of Statistics of Madeira.

2002 – DREM launches its first website and creates its first logo.

2003 – DREM starts international cooperation with the counterparts of the Azores (SREA) and Canary Islands (ISTAC). Until now, seven projects were already completed and one is currently in development. The statistical domains covered by these projects were Regional Accounts, Information Technology, Short Term Trend Indicators, Time Series Analysis and Tourism.

2007 – DREM launches a redesigned website, with new features.

2008 – According to the Law No. 22/2008, DREM keeps its double status, but is recognized as a statistical authority.

2014 – DREM develops a totally new website, most of it translated into English, and with connection to social networks (Twitter and Facebook). A new logo was also created.

December 2018

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