03.07.2000/VG

Minutes of the Working Party

“Dissemination policy for Euro-Sics”

Participants :

- V. Lo Moro

- D. Staerk

- J. Pessanha

- F. Nugnes

- K. Reeh

- G.L. Mazzi

- A. Rodriguez

- L. Probst

- V. Guillemet

0. Description of the project

  • Increasing demand of short term information
  • Notoriety Objective is more important than profitable objective
  • Euro-Sics database should include series from US and Japan (for comparisons)

1. Positioning

  • Eurostat has to be on the Market (as OECD, IMF…): competitive position
  • Euro-Sics should be perceived as a reference (include information on US and Japan to euro-zone is necessary)
  • No forecasting but now-casting when it will be available ; the use of different sources must be clarify in the offer

Euro-Sics will be perceived as the reference of short-term statistical information for the Euro-zone, EU15, members states and USA and Japan for policy and decision-makers.

2. Branding

Added value of Euro-Sics :

  • Geographical coverage (number of countries)
  • Metadata
  • Long series
  • Timely series
  • On line access

Proposals of names

  • ECOBASE : European Economic Database
  • ONLI : On Line Indicators
  • ESTI : European Short Term Indicators
  • STE : Short Term Economy
  • ONLI.EU : On Line European Indicators

A test should be done

Promotional Support:

  • Name of the product
  • Name of the NSI(s), ECB
  • Eurostat

3. Roles and Responsibilities

Already discussed

Eurostat

  • Technical operation of the product (updating process, user interfaces)
  • Organising
  • Updating and reliability of own estimates
  • Follow-up and regular management and quality report to member states

NSIs

  • Updating in time and reliability of the data
  • Co-ordination with other national providers
  • Quality follow-up

Dissemination Working party

  • Definition of the dissemination plan

Data Shop Network

  • Support…Help desk
  • Marketing and selling

4. User needs

- Presentation of the main results of the satisfaction survey made near the customers of Luxembourg Data Shop in April 2000.

18% of the customers are unsatisfied with value for money


Analysis of the population of unsatisfied customers: 46% of the customers who are unsatisfied with value for money are dissatisfied with timeliness of the data…

What customers need…

Timeliness of the data

Availability of indicators

Information about the update of databases

Comparability of the data

Clarity of the explanatory notes

Information on new products

We need to know how to communicate with these customers. For instance, what kind of information on new products they need? see the results of Income’s survey…

- Presentation of Income’s survey:

3 different levels in order to distinguish the customers and so in order to use adapting communication’s mains.

1st level: the level of knowledge of Eurostat offer

2nd level: the use profile

3rd level: the customer’s needs

Necessity to implement tools for following the customers (profile satisfaction and dissatisfaction)

3 main dissatisfaction:

Lack of adaptation

Lack of orientation

Lack of creation

5. Tools of dissemination

- Euro-Sics must be disseminated trough a specific web site and not through Newcronos.

- Use the tools of Eurostat web site:

Multilingual site (English language may be the first step)

Possibility to register users

Alert system (information or/and file sent)

Ask a question to a specific Data Shop

Ordering mechanism

- Necessity to provide on web site information on what kind of series are available (before the act of subscription)

- Remarks: CIRCA is a good tool for privileged users but not for external users.

For the next Dissemination Working Party a prototype (in paper support) would be presented.

6.User profiles and dissemination networks

Already discussed

User profiles : Paying profile/general users

  • Privileged users : NSI, Central banks, European Institutions
  • Resellers : Data Shop network
  • Redisseminators : Datastream, Reuters…
  • External end users

Dissemination network

  • The Data Shop network will resell passwords to acess the site
  • A request to acess Euro-Sics recorded into a NSI web site will be forwarded to a Data Shop

Redisseminators

  • They will use their own network to disseminate Euro-Sics.
  • Details on how to redistribute sales will be discussed.

7.Pricing

- Euro-Sics must be considered as a global product

Maximum pricing proposal (a year)

External Users / University/Research Institutes
End User / 1 200 euros / 1 200 euros
Intranet / 2 400 euros / 1 200 euros
Licence of re-dissemination / 12 000 euros

- What about a testing period free of charge?

  • risk that metadata downloaded
  • if during this testing period, no metadata are offered, risk of product’s devaluation

- What about the requests from countries with no Data Shops?

  • ?Luxembourg Data Shop

8. Marketing Plan

Proposal at the end of September