Speakers
Description
National Statistical Offices (NSOs) globally are under pressure to deliver more comprehensive and timely statistics, whilst operating in an increasingly complex survey environment. Declining response rates, rising costs, increasing respondent burden and expanding operational workloads are forcing NSOs to re-evaluate traditional approaches and to pursue innovative alternatives.
In response to these challenges, the Enterprise Statistics Division at the Central Statistics Office (CSO) Ireland is undertaking holistic reform of business data collection and processing. Under the three pillars of Data Utility, Infrastructure and Processes the Division is delivering new insights, better technologies and streamlined operational workflows.
Within this framework, the structure of data and the technological layer of the organisation are treated as interdependent, requiring cohesive development to deliver new processes that can address these challenges.
This paper will outline how the ‘Data Utility’ pillar delivered streamlined questionnaire designs, developed metadata, and is driving the Division’s transition to multi-source statistical production, significantly reducing operational workload and respondent burden. It presents the critical importance of data utility in the context of the ‘Infrastructure’ pillar, which is now delivering a metadata-driven systems approach to data capture and processing. This places businesses at the centre of the new model and shifts focus from a siloed ‘survey first’ approach, to ‘data first’ production, bolstered by Ireland’s National Data Infrastructure and the CSO’s role as National Data Steward.
This paper will example how through coherent development, new processes have already come on-line. These include the development of data ‘spines’ with a secondary-data-first emphasis, and a new ‘active collection management’ approach to surveying.