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Minutes of the meeting of the Working Party
“Dissemination of statistical information”
Luxembourg, 26 and 27 April 1999
1. The Chairman, Mr Amador Rodriguez, opened the meeting and welcomed those present.
The agenda was adopted.
Mr Rodriguez explained how the meeting would proceed: the morning would be devoted to the first five items on the agenda and the afternoon to task force work. The following day would be devoted to the conclusions of the working groups and then to the items on the agenda.
2. The minutes of the meeting of 19 and 20 November 1998 were approved unanimously.
3. DG XIII's Green Paper on the information society- (Doc. DWP/04/99-III-1)
· Mrs Lena Frej Ohlsson (Eurostat) introduced the subject by recalling what had happened since the last meeting. At the last meeting of the working party, members had been very unhappy at not being consulted on this document. However, at that time, an official version had not yet been available. Members now had until 1 June 1999 to comment on the document.
A letter had been sent to all members of the working party asking them to send their comments to Mrs Sybille Von Oppeln (Statistisches Bundesamt) by 15 March 1999. No comments had been sent, and Mrs Von Oppeln therefore drafted a document and sent each member a copy for this meeting.
It would now have to be decided whether the proposal submitted to DG XIII would be on behalf of the Working Party or on behalf of the European Statistical System (ESS).
Mrs Ohlsson informed the meeting that Mr Bisschop of DG XIII was present and could reply to any questions.
· Mrs Von Oppeln said she was disappointed not to have received any contributions and thanked Eurostat for its assistance.
A contribution from the Netherlands delegation had reached her in the meantime and had been introduced into the new version provided at the meeting.
She explained that this was a very important project for the work of the working party as it covered the whole spectrum of information in public administration. However, she considered that insufficient account had been taken of statistics: only the following two points had been mentioned:
- data collection was carried out by Eurostat;
- data protection constituted a constraint on the free movement of information.
Mrs Von Oppeln had two important comments to make on the Green Paper:
1. The Green Paper talked of "information resulting from administrative activities" and "non-administrative information" in general. The special feature of the ESS lay in the fact that its activity, its product, was information.
Moreover, the ESS played the role of intermediary between government bodies and the public: it collected the information and then retransmitted it.
If DG XIII wanted to study the development of the information society, the special features of statistics had to be taken into account. Mrs Von Oppeln offered the services of the working party to DG XIII.
2. The Green Paper considered public opinion in terms of partnership but retained a bias towards the marketing of information. She also considered that too much emphasis had been placed on private intermediaries from the information industry.
In conclusion, the ESS had developed procedures for providing information and its experience should be taken into account by DG XIII.
The proposed document was based on the marketing model developed at the last meeting of the working party. It could be amended. Mrs Von Oppeln said she would like to receive the opinions of the delegations.
· Mr Rodriguez thanked Mrs Von Oppeln for her leadership role and gave the floor to members.
Mr Lo Moro (ISTAT) drew attention to an important aspect of the Green Paper: it was about information aimed at the information society.
He agreed with the comments of Mrs Von Oppeln: not enough account was taken of statistics and there was too much emphasis on private companies.
He then stated the opinion of the ISTAT on the Green Paper: public statistical information should be made available to the citizen, ESS was a means of doing this: by making data available, the ESS was serving the information society.
The Netherlands delegate, Mr Van Kalleveen (CBS) agreed with the document. MrLevenius (SCB – S) informed the meeting that he was going to provide a contribution but needed time.
· The delegates agreed that the document would be submitted to DG XIII on behalf of the Working Party. They also agreed that this document could provide information for other bodies such as the SPC.
· A timetable was then set for finalising the document of Mrs Von Oppeln by 1 June.
10/05/99: final deadline for sending contributions to Mrs Frej Ohlsson;
28/05/99: resulting document considered final.
The revised document following contributions would be sent to delegates for final agreement before 28 May.
· Mr Bisschop (DG XIII) pointed out that, in addition to the joint position of this working party, the Commission would also like to receive individual contributions from the National Statistical Institutes (NSIs).
He informed the meeting that a communication from the Commission was planned in order to summarise the contributions received. The date was not yet fixed.
Moreover, DG XIII had organised a public meeting, open to all, on the Green Paper for 25May 1999 in Brussels.
4. Task Force Marketing (Doc. DWP/04/99-III-2)
Mrs Frej Ohlsson reminded the meeting of what had taken place:
· In January 1999, 3 tables had been distributed to the task force participants in order to obtain their contributions on the following subjects:
- identification of the main needs of users;
- identification of existing products and services meeting the user needs identified;
- identification of the areas of cooperation for European statistics.
· Seven countries had replied and these replies proved very interesting.
The following points have been established from these replies:
· identification of the needs of users:
- Basic information:
- the need for national data was generally greater than that for European data.
- There was a divergence of opinion in the contributions.
- Standard information:
- a great need for European data had been identified.
- Tailored information:
- a great need for European data had been identified.
· Identification of existing products and services meeting the user needs identified:
all contributions mention the following types of products:
- paper
- Internet
- electronic products
- on-line databases
- press communiqués
- tailored services
· Identification of the areas of cooperation for European statistics:
- Basic information: Germany, Italy, Sweden, Finland.
- Standard information: Germany, Netherlands, Italy, Sweden, Finland, France
- Tailored information: Germany, Finland, the Netherlands, Sweden.
This led to the following proposals to be developed at the afternoon session of the working party:
· Basic informationà Common web site
· Standard products and servicesà Initiative of the SPC and the ECB (indicators)
· Tailored informationà Reference catalogue.
Results of the discussions of the Marketing Task Force
The members of the Task Force first defined their mission, consisting of three elements:
- to define an ESS marketing strategy and not merely a mixture of the various NSI strategies;
- to serve the community and citizens, and not merely to refer to sales figures;
- to ensure fair and transparent terms of access to the data by all persons wishing to find out about and obtain our data.
A strategic model was then defined on the basis of the (circles) marketing model presented at the last meeting of the working party.
Levels(according to the marketing model) / Priority actions / Initial conditions to be met
Basic
/ · Common web site· Common catalogue
· Free access / · Common list of indicators and metadata
Standard / · Common database containing long series at a detailed level / · Past experience: Eurostat database, ESS products, NSIs' best practice
Tailored / · Statistical information centres
· On request / · Data Shop network
· Response procedures (quality charter of the Data Shop network)
· NSI integrated services (example of Denmark)
Strategic principles:
- 3-level marketing model (see above)
- Principle of "electronic first"
- ESS brand/user awareness: advertising the ESS brand
- Giving priority to basic information, at least initially
- Registration of users in order to obtain a clear picture of them
- Setting up a reference catalogue on the Web
- Languages: English plus the national language for the links to the national web sites
- Setting up statistical information centres.
Actions proposed:
- Defining the content of the site (task of the "products" working party):
- Indicators and metadata
- Links
- Catalogue
- Inventory of existing products
- Feasibility study: resources, costs, contributions from the NSIs and Eurostat, objectives, etc.
- Drafting a marketing document explaining the strategy.
After the responses of the participants, the following aspects were clarified:
- The "statistical information centre" was a much wider concept than the Data Shop: the user could come to consult and check information and obtain technical assistance.
- The marketing strategy defined by the working party was aimed particularly at making ourselves known in terms of the ESS and establishing a presence: that was why free access was proposed.
- The importance of close coordination and promotion between the NSIs was underlined.
5. ESS Website Task Force (Doc DWP/04/99-III-3)
Euro Sics – ESS Website - (Meeting document)
The Chairman introduced the subject by mentioning the SPC initiative in the project for disseminating short-term economic indicators (Euro Sics). The document produced by MrDaniel Byk, Director at Eurostat, was made available in French and English at the meeting. The German translation was not available due to lack of time.
Laurent Probst (Eurostat) explained that this initiative complemented that of the Working Party on the website project. The features of both sites were explained and could be summarised as follows.
Features
/ EURO SICS INITIATIVE / ESS WEB SITEAccess / · Restricted access (privileged users) / · Public access
Type of user / · Institutional users, specialists / · All types of user
Mission / · Mission: to provide to privileged users a detailed harmonised or non-harmonised set of updated short-term European indicators. / · To develop the concept and image of European statistics
· To provide to users key European or national short-term indicators
· To inform users of ESS products.
Value added / · A full set of short-term European indicators / · To make available to users a portal statistical web site.
Problems to be resolved / · Timely loading of indicators (in terms of minutes)
à extensive technical constraints. / · Inventory of short-term indicators published by the NSIs on their own web sites à good knowledge of all the sites.
Conclusion / · Data bank aimed at highly specialised institutional users. / · ESS on-line shop.
ESS Website - (Doc. DWP/04/99-III-3)
Mr. Laurent Probst then briefly presented the document which had been distributed prior to the meeting: the objectives, specifications and main problems. He explained the scenarios put forwards:
· A European portal site (site containing only links), the construction of which required an exhaustive inventory of the indicators would be published by each NSI on its own WEB site.
· A European site on which the specified indicators will be published at a specific time and for which the delivery and efficient updating procedures would have to be established.
Each of these ideas contained the idea of a European reference environment.
The comments received from countries following transmission of the document indicated general agreement for beginning with the first scenario and the desire to move towards the second scenario.
This proposal had to be examined at the afternoon meeting of the Task Force. The issues to be dealt with would be the language of the site, the catalogue referred to by Mrs Frej Ohlsson in the previous item and the selection of indicators.
The delegates were asked to comment on this presentation. In general terms, members were favorably disposed toward the first scenario, without losing sight of the project for a truly common Website. In order to do this, it was emphasied that the inventory of the metadata was crucially important in the construction of this site.
Moreover, following these issues and questions raised on the subject of Euro-Sics, MrLaurentProbst explained once again how the two projects were complementary: the Euro-sics site was aimed at a very restricted group of users for whom the speed of receipt of data was essential, and the ESS Website was aimed at a much broader group of users for whom the metadata were very important. Mrs Von Oppeln then asked whether it was necessary to have a site for around thirty users (Euro-Sics) whereas electronic mail could easily be used in this case. Mr Probst stated that the dissemination for Euro-Sics would be discussed at the May meeting of the SPC.
Results of the discussions of the Products Task Force
M. Laurent Probst (Eurostat) presented the results of the work of the ESS Website Working Party.
· Mission: to provide to the users key, updated statistical information from the European Statistical System.
· Contents:
- Definition of the 4 categories of information: indicators, press releases, informational products, links and contacts.
- Proposed information categories / themes to be approved by the Member States : Economy, Social, Industry, Services and Distributive Trades.
· Languages: English for navigation and English plus national language for the content.
· Harmonisation: the harmonisation of the content was not part of the project. The role of the Task Force was to harmonised the presentation. The Task Force proposed using the IMF standards.
· Information to feature on homepage and presentation of a example:
- What was new in the ESS?
- Options of viewing the categories of information, the classes of information, viewing by country, searches and possibilities of links and contacts.
· Presentation of a model page on a indicator: harmonised index, national index.
· Technical aspect: the link was the rule.