Chair: Kari Djerf
Room: S3A Barbakan
Time: 17:00 - 18:30
Date: 27 June
Session 4 - papers & presentations
| Presenting Author | Abstract |
|---|---|
| Mirko Herzner e-mail: mirko.herzner@destatis.de | Title: <<< Quality handbook and quality principles - progress and lessons learnt >>> The development of Quality Principles for each part of the statistical production process according to the GSBPM is a result of an internal analysis concerning Destatis’ fulfilment of the ESS Quality Assurance Framework and was further strengthened by the latest Peer Review. A strategy for the implementation and monitoring of the Quality Principles has recently been developed and tested. After the approval of the Quality Handbook (comprising the above mentioned Quality Principles) in March 2017 by the highest decision-making level of the Statistical Offices of the Federation and the Länder, six pilots have been conducted to assess the compliance with the Quality Principles in different subject matter statistics. A number of improvements have been made to the checklist used for the assessment (like the introduction of filter criteria to limit the total number of items to be answered for the individual statistics or the assignment of Code of Practice principles that are influenced by each of the 342 Quality Principles of our checklist). The lessons learnt cover a wide range of issues including the optimal setup for the assessment workshops (at least two people with good knowledge of the GSBPM) and issues with individual quality principles (not all of them are of equal importance; what does “documentation” involve?). The basic facts concerning the development and design of the Quality Handbook have already been presented at the Quality Conference in 2016 (Q2016). This paper is focussing on the progress made and the lessons learnt. |
| Grete Olsen e-mail: gol@ssb.no | Title: <<< Quality system in a digitalised and modernised statistical system >>> Statistics Norway has started a program for digitalisation and modernisation of the production process. By 2020 a new system for some statistics will be implemented, and for 2022 the whole production will take part in the new environment. Will the modernised production system give us more and better metadata on quality from the production? Do we need new indicators for quality and new systems for quality management? How can we digitalise the production of quality indicators? The dream is to produce quality indicators automatically in the production process and have parts of the quality report ready when publishing the statistics. Today each subject matter unit reports on quality on their statistics. Furthermore, we have a centralised system for following and improving quality in the statistics. Based on the European Statistics Code of Practice (CoP) we have quality reviews on several statistics each year. Statistics Norway do also report to the Ministry of Finance on timeliness, punctuality, response burden and response rates. Statistics Norway try to combine administrative and statistical systems, such as risk management, internal control system, Lean thinking, quality reviews and other quality reports, to find the best way to measure quality and contribute to continuous improvements in a consistent and efficient way. Some of the lean projects has established standardised procedures for different processes with checklists step by step. These checklists may be a base for collecting metadata on quality indicators from each step. In the quality reviews some of the major findings are need for better harmonisation of documentation such as “About the statistics” and harmonisation of metadata. When modernising the production system there will be major changes in the production system. This can give us the opportunity to standardise and harmonise production, metadata, documentation and dissemination. |
| Agustín Cañada e-mail: agustin.canada.martinez@ine.es | Title: <<< Quality reviews of official statistics and the role of the external stakeholders: some initiatives from the NSI of Spain >>> Nowadays, the national statistical offices are moving a step forward from traditional quality assessment done by the offices themselves, towards a more complete quality system that involves external experts and other stakeholders. User Satisfaction Surveys (USS) have remained so far as the traditional tool; they are the core instrument when assessing quality and relevance of statistics. The INE has regularly conducted (every three years) a series of USSs to qualified users starting in 2007. The last round was completed in 2016 and included a set of developments and extensions, such as weighing the different quality dimensions and then obtaining a global composite satisfaction index; or customization of the survey attending to different categories of users (i.e.: users from the media). Now we would like to move towards a greater and intensive participation of different Stakeholders. In fact, this approach constituted a recommendation in the last Peer Review. The INE, to fulfil this recommendation, has launched several improvement actions: First, a new procedure to evaluate routinely the statistical operations by the statistical system collegiate bodies, specifically the High Council of Statistics (HCS). It is a collegiate body, composed of representatives from different stakeholders and users (business organizations, trade unions, researchers…).Upon this structure, the INE has drawn a procedure to involve the HCS in the quality assessment of the statistical production, and statistical operation (Labour Cost Index) has been selected for a pilot test. Second, the INE has started up the organization of seminars with experts (researchers and academia) focused in a specific statistic, within the yearly meetings co-organized with the "Statistics and Operational Research Society”. Alongside a round table session on a specific group of statistics has been organized within those meetings, with the participation of key experts in the selected statistical operation. With these actions, the INE of Spain will set up a quality assessment system including external evaluations to the institution about its statistical products, even for the years between peer reviews. However, the actions previously described do not need set aside specific research on users: as the traditional USS are being supplemented by new assessment procedures linked to the DIGICOM Project where the INE is involved. In this paper, all these initiatives are described, emphasizing the means and tools to incorporate experts' views in the quality management system of the INE. In this paper, all these initiatives are described, emphasizing the means and tools to incorporate experts' views in the quality management system of the INE. |
| Carmen Picón-Aguilar e-mail: Carmen.Picon_Aguilar@ecb.europa.eu | Title: <<< Assessing the quality of the geographical dimension in macro-economic statistics through mirror data >>> The quality of the geographical breakdown in the balance of payments and related statistics such as international trade in goods, trade in services and FDI statistics can best be assessed by means of comparisons with mirror data, to assess bilateral asymmetries. Such checks form a natural complement to the validation of consistency between balance of payments and the national accounts external account. Although such comparisons are performed regularly, they tend to focus on pairs of countries, and do not provide sufficient guidance to assess which of the countries involved has relatively better data, nor do they provide an indication of the level of quality achieved in specifying the geographical dimension. This paper describes three synthetic indicators developed to provide for a group of countries, and specifically in the context of an economic union external account, an assessment of the quality of the geographical breakdowns by country and the relevance of a country to the aggregate asymmetry of that group of countries. The indicators are applied in the context of euro area and the EU foreign direct investment statistics. |