Hallgrímur Snorrason

Hallgrímur Snorrason was born in Reykjavik, Iceland in 1947. He is an economist by training and received his university education at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland and the University of Lund in Sweden.

Hallgrímur Snorrason worked as an economist at the national Economic Institute in Iceland from 1972 to 1984, thereof as Deputy Managing Director from 1980-1984. He was appointed Director-General of Statistics Iceland (including the National Registry of Persons) as of 1 January 1985 and has served continuously in that capacity since then.

Hallgrímur Snorrason has participated actively in international work in official statistics. He has represented Iceland on the Statistical Programme Committee of the EU since the foundation and Iceland´s membership of the European Economic Area in 1994 and served as a member of the Partnership Group of EU NSI´s and Eurostat. He has been the Icelandic delegate at the UNECE Conference of European Statisticians (CES) since 1985, acting several times as “kingmaker” of the Conference and served as member of the CES Bureau 1999-2003. He was member of the UN Statistical Commission in 1998-2001. He has also participated in international technical co-operation in the field of official statistics. He was one of the main initiators and the first Chairman of the EFTA/Eurostat Development Programme for the Baltic States 1992-1995. He has participated several times in technical co-operation with the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics and was chairman of the High Level Expert Group for the international monitoring of the 2002 population and housing census in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia in 2001-2004.

Hallgrímur Snorrason has been an active member of the International Statistical Institute (ISI) and the International Association of Official Statistics (IAOS) and was President of the IAOS 1993-1995.

In Iceland, Hallgrímur Snorrason has chaired or been member of various government commissions and ad-hoc committees on economic and statistical matters.

Hallgrímur Snorrason has been associated with OECD work for a long time, first through the annual OECD country reviews in the late 1970´s and early 1980´s and later through the ongoing statistical co-operation between OECD countries. He is the Icelandic member of the newly established OECD Committee on Statistics.