Sessions 28th meeting of the Wiesbaden Group on Business Registers

 

Session 1: Country Progress Reports

Session Leader - Bastiaan Rooijakkers, Statistics Netherlands

The response of the CPRs describe the present and future developments of SBRs around the world. The different views on the maintenance and the governance of a national SBR by an arbitrary country provides useful information about the roles of an SBR in official Statistics. This session describes the outcome of the response of the CPRs and identifies some emerging activities for the future expert group meetings.

Session 2: Profiling complex Statistical Units (SUs)

Session Leader: Roland Sturm, National Statistics Office (Destatis), Germany

Profiling in a Business Register (BR) context is commonly referred to as a method to investigate the legal, operational and accounting structures in the business world in order to delineate the statistical units and maybe also efficient structures for the collection of statistical data. Depending on user demands profiling may focus on various units – to find out about the perimeter of complex enterprises can be as focal as “simply” detect their local units. Often the method starts from the most complex units in the real world – the enterprise groups.

The session aims to bring together worldwide experiences in BR how to provide business statisticians with a clear picture of the economic actors (enterprises, enterprise groups, units based on activity or on location). Which unit concepts and which relations/links between different units are implemented in the BR? What data sources provide information on the statistically relevant units? What practical issues occur and how are they dealt with when gathering and processing information about these units? Do the BR in different countries use common concepts and are the users in the statistical domains aware of the different types of units in the BR? How do we explain the appropriate use of BR data for different statistical purposes?

In this session, the participants are invited to present methodology, special sources, maintenance of the derivation of SUs in their own country.

An abstract of your paper should be submitted to the session leader (roland.sturm@destatis.de) and to the organizers (WiesbadenGroup2023@cbs.nl) by June 1, 2023.

Session Leader: Andrew Allen, Office for National Statistics (ONS), United Kingdom

Collection of Business Statistics has been affected by globalization of large businesses for many years. Large Enterprise Groups organize themselves in many different countries, but not only for production reasons but also for administrative reasons, e.g. to optimize their profits or for a favorable tax-environment.   Several different business models have emerged, such as factory-less-producers and toll processors.   How are these businesses recorded on the statistical business register and is there a need to hold extra information on these or does the standard units model still work. What sources of data are used to derive multi-national structures?   We would welcome any contributions about country practices and special arrangements to manage large multi-national businesses.

A response to the challenges of globalization has been to set up large cases units, to not only get the unit structure correct (profiling type activity) but to also ensure more accurate and efficient data collection.   Large cases units can be involved in organizing the statistical units through to full scale data collection for the largest multi-national enterprise groups.  Their role therefore spans different parts of statistical offices, and requires additional skills, such as accountancy knowledge.  Contributions covering the design and function of LCU’s will provide a useful comparison of country practices.

An abstract of your paper should be submitted to the session leader (andrew.allen@ons.gov.uk) and to the organizers (WiesbadenGroup2023@cbs.nl) by June 1, 2023.

Session 4: Industrial Classification Systems: Treatments for the upcoming NACE or ISIC revision and other industry classification issues

Session Leader: Bastiaan Rooijakkers, Statistics Netherlands

Industrial classifications systems provide a framework for the collection and presentation of economic activity, and it is critical that they reflect the current industrial picture of an economy so the public and decision makers can make informed decisions on key policy issues. There are various industrial classification systems around the world and each one provides a unique perspective on the industrial composition of an economy.

These systems include the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS), the Nomenclature of Economic Activities (NACE), the International Standard Industrial Classification of All Economic Activities (ISIC), and others as well. Each industrial classification system is updated on a periodic basis and business registers implement these changes and reclassify statistical units. Some updates to these systems can be minor while others can have major impacts and present implementation challenges for business registers.

This session seeks contributions on issues related to industrial classification systems and how these systems are implemented in the Business Register. The session seeks to understand the issues, challenges, strategies, and innovative methods for updating industrial classifications in the Business Register. This session also seeks contributions to better understand the sources and methods that statistical agencies use to update their industrial classification systems in the Business Register.

Contributions are invited and encouraged on a range of topics and issues related to industrial classification systems, including (but not limited to):

• The upcoming NACE or ISIC revision is of great importance to statistical agencies. For many countries it is a challenge to find the right sources, techniques, and methods to classify new activities like “factory-less goods producers,” the “sharing economy” (e.g., digital platforms) or “special purpose entities.” What plans and/or strategies are being developed for the implementation of the revised economic classification systems (ISIC and NACE)? What are some lessons learned from the recent NAICS 2022 revision?
• What are the current methods and procedures for updating statistical units to a new industrial classification system? What new techniques or methods (such as “auto-coding” statistical units, the use of text analysis, AI, machine learning, etc.) are used classify statistical units?
• What are some best practices for updating statistical units to a new industrial classification system that can be shared with the Business Register community?
• What are some challenging industrial classification issues? How are they handled?

An abstract of your paper should be submitted to the session leader (talan.david@bls.gov) and to the organizers (WiesbadenGroup2023@cbs.nl) by June 1, 2023.

 

Session 5: Workshop SBR Maturity Model

Session Leader: Hank Hermans, Statistics Netherlands

The SBR Maturity Model is an instrument which provides statisticians a framework to assess the current status of the SBR in their country. It helps to detect the stage of the SBR for several dimensions. The MM aims to be a tool to:

• share knowledge and best practices
• determine the current state of your SBR
• determine possible next steps for development
• find help and guidelines to actually be able to take those steps.

This session seeks contributions on best practices on how to distinct between the stages of the MM for each dimension, how next steps for improvements of the SBR are identified and which guidelines or other instruments were identified as useful during this process.

The participants of the Wiesbadengroup meeting will be split into smaller groups in separate ‘breakout rooms’, where the contributor is asked to present the best practise in a short presentation of 5 min. Each presentation is followed by a discussion lead by a breakout session leader, yet TBD. The members of each group should provide or work on some general recommendations based on the discussions, best practices or suggestions made by the participants. Afterwards, the results of each group are shared in a plenary session.

For this session it is not necessary to write a paper. A short abstract of your contribution to one of these topics should be submitted to the session leader (hjcm.hermans@cbs.nl) and to the organizers (WiesbadenGroup2023@cbs.nl) by June 1, 2023.

 

Session 6: New data sources: Opportunity and challenges

Session Leader: Annabelle Mourougane, OECD

The objective of this session is to discuss the opportunity and challenges associated with the use of new data sources and new techniques for improving the timeliness, coverage and quality of SBRs. New data sources should be interpreted in a broad sense, covering but not limited to satellite images, smart meters, Google Trend search data, surveys from private providers (e.g. Meta, Amazon) and social media data and web-scraping data. Experience using machine-learning algorithms and/ or natural language processing will also be appreciated.

Issues to be discussed include

1. What are the main challenges in using alternative data sources in official statistics?
2. How best can these sources complement the use of existing data and enrich SBRs?
3. What are the requirements for alternative data sources to be fully incorporated in the SBR production process?

Papers showcasing attempts to incorporate alternative data sources into SBR data production would be greatly appreciated.

An abstract of your paper should be submitted to the session leader (Annabelle.MOUROUGANE@oecd.org) and to the organizers (WiesbadenGroup2023@cbs.nl) by June 1, 2023.

 

Session 7: Redesigns of the SBR

Session Leader: TBD, Statistics Netherlands

This session concentrates on the redesign of a SBR to be integrated in statistical production processes. Important topics are the innovations in the governance structure of the SBR or the development of new software or other technical solutions to maintain the SBR or to monitor indicators based on SBR populations in this respect. In the Netherlands the redesign of the SBR is triggered by the redesign of the Dutch economic statistics in general to be able to produce more coherent output and describe more different aspects of the Dutch economy.