The committee under the chairmanship of Shri V.T.Krishnamachari, the then Deputy Chairman of erstwhile Planning Commission was constituted for examining the matter of establishing statistical cadres after the cabinet decision of 26 July 1952.

This decision paved the way for formation of ISS and finally the service was constituted in 1961 as a cadre of qualified professional with core discipline of Statistics.

The Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) is the Cadre Controlling Authority (CCA) for the ISS officers.

At present, the cadre strength of the service is 814 and distributed in various grades as under: Generally, the ISS officers serve at various ministries and departments as directors and secretaries.

The ISS officers are involved in compilation of different kinds of statistics and formulation/monitoring/evaluation of different schemes in these ministries/departments and are under the administrative control of the concerned ministries.