International Roundtable on Business Survey Frames

New Zealand
Geoff Mead
Statistics New Zealand
2 August 2006

Country progress report 2006

1. Organisation

Statistics New Zealand continues to operate a comprehensive Business Frame (BF). The BF currently records 430,000 live enterprise records and is estimated to cover over 99% of economic activity within the scope of the tax system. Administrative data is the main source of information that is used to maintain the BF, with survey data used to provide additional information for large and complex businesses.

A team of 12 people work on the BF Section. Their work includes the updating of the frame, quality monitoring and reporting, training and assisting BF users, and new developments related to the BF. The team’s work does not include respondent contact, collection and scanning questionnaire processes related to frame update surveys (approximately two people in another team do this), nor the technical computer support of the BF system (approximately one person does this).

2. Developments during the past year

·  New version of ANZSIC (Australia New Zealand Standard Industrial Classification)

In a joint project with the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) a new version of the Australia New Zealand Standard Industrial Classification (ANZSIC 2006) has been developed. ANZSIC 2006 reflects the outcomes of a substantial review of the classification, which included extensive consultation with internal and external users of the classification. International comparability has been enhanced, by aligning the classification, as far as possible, with the International Standard Industrial Classification (ISIC) revision 4. The ANZSIC 2006 classification has been added to the BF and is being maintained in tandem with the previous ANZSIC version. The maintenance of both versions of ANZSIC on the BF will continue for a number of years, until all statistical outputs that use the BF as a frame have moved to using ANZSIC 06.

·  Creation of the Longitudinal Business Frame (LBF)

The LBF has been created from the BF history data and additional longitudinal links between local units derived from:

(a)  statistical matching and

(b)  tracking clusters of employees using linked employer employee information.

The LBF is updated on a quarterly cycle. It is providing an improved longitudinal frame of business information for micro data analysis and is also being used in the production of business demographic statistics. Development work has started on incorporating the LBF statistical matching and tracking employee cluster information into core BF maintenance processes.

·  Greater use being made of the BF as an integration frame work

With the growing use of administrative data in the production of statistics and data integration projects extending the range of statistics from existing data sources, the use of the BF as an integration framework and/or a source of standard classifications is growing. Projects using the BF as an integration frame work during the past year have included:

o  Use of electronic point of sale data to test the feasibility of producing monthly consumer expenditure statistics. The BF is being piloted as a source of standard classifications for businesses with the point of sale terminals.

o  Private non profit sector satellite account for the National Accounts. The BF is providing sector codes and links to administrative data sources that will feed into the satellite account.

o  Test link of agricultural local units on the BF to an administrative land based register of farms for several regions.

3. Future Plans

·  Further extensions in the use of administrative data to maintain the BF

As noted above, work is under way to investigate the use of linked employer employee information for BF maintenance. Comprehensive linked employer employee administrative data is available monthly and has the potential to help maintain the BF for:

o  Business ownership and structural changes identified when clusters of employees move from one legal unit (employer) to another.

o  Identifying missing local units on the BF e.g. If an employer has a cluster of employees in a region where there is no BF local unit?

The same project is also investigating the use of statistical matching of new legal units against existing BF units to help identify longitudinal links for continuing businesses.

·  Business model transformation strategy (BmTS)

Statistics New Zealand commenced the BmTS project in 2004 to design and implement a “technology platform” on which future programmes and projects undertaken by the organisation will be founded. The platform will include three key deliverables:

1.  A number of standard, generic end-to end processes.

2.  A disciplined approach to data management, with a single, consistent approach to data and information management. That will create a meta data store, a single input data store, and a single logical output data store.

3.  A standard enterprise architecture that will ensure that Statistics NZ is able to build up over time a portfolio of standard solutions and components, each one consistently documented at a business user and technical level.

Statistical frames such as the BF are recognised as part of the core of the BmTS, being described as reference data store within the new model. Progress to date with the BMTS includes an input data environment, respondent contact processes and several statistical transformations. That is being used for several small to medium sized annual business surveys. The vision is that the current BF system will be replaced with a new "system" within the BmTS model in two to four years.

For more information please contact Geoff Mead