Faced with today’s data revolution, many national statistical offices (NSO) are modernising their programs to be more efficient and responsive to users’ needs. A strong statistical research and development (R&D) program is one way to fuel evidence-based decision-making and a key enabler of modernisation. Our agency’s methodology R&D program is geared towards providing solutions to current issues and challenges, identifying or developing sound theoretical frameworks and exploring new areas which could be beneficial in the medium to long term future. This paper will present a high-level view of our current research priorities and recent achievements. In particular, concrete examples in the following five specific areas will be showcased: (1) Use of non-probabilistic data source in a scientifically rigorous framework; (2) Defining, measuring and communicating quality in a multi-source environment; (3) Access, privacy and confidentiality; (4) High-definition data and small area estimation; and (5) Use of machine learning to improve the statistical production process. The paper will also briefly discuss how the R&D program is evolving to address the ever-changing demand landscape, and how this impacts the forthcoming research needs.