Transcript 21st Wiesbaden Group Meeting on Business Registers OECD, 24th-27th November 2008 Session Conveners Summary Thursday, 27th November 2008, p.m.

21st Wiesbaden Group
Meeting on Business
Registers
OECD, 24th-27th
November 2008
Session Conveners
Summary
Thursday, 27th November
2008, p.m.
Session 1: Country Progress
Reports
• Some 32 reports were presented
• A true “vademecum” of what is going on and what the
problems and solutions are
• Rich variety of commonalities, differences and
adopted solutions
• Detectable trend towards
–
–
–
–
BR integration or matching
Linking to trade
Entrepreneurship, Micro –data, firm growth
Systemic overhaul of systems in some countries
• Delegates accepted OECD’s proposal to prepare a
country synopsis and summary of key issues to be
carried forward
Session 2a : producer
perspective
• Survey frames from BR are common, but do not automatically
lead to a common frame
• Adding information to the units in the BR is a high value
starting point to interconnect data bases
• Tackling new tasks for statistics should begin with feeding
information into the register
• Globalisation forces us to reconsider the appropriateness of
the statistical units used (“global” units?)
• BR= bookkeeping system for bigger, complex units; statistical
system for small units
• BR as backbone of statistical system requires close cooperation with other statistical departments
• => building up a system must mean establishing co-operation
Session 2b: User perspective
• OECD/STI: Experience from matching BR
with Patent Applications (France):
– Main difficulties were lack of identity of
observation units (SIRENE <-> INPI)
– Large size of datasets
– Available information for identification and
matching often too limited
• ECB: Register of Institutions and Assets
Database (RIAD):
– Core benefit to BRs is that RIAD is complete, ESA
95 conform, and up-to-date register on financial
institutions
Session 2b (Cont’d)
• OECD/CFE: Analysis of impact of
globalisation on entrepreneurship and SMEssome data requirements:
– Trade by size-class: develop more of this linkage
data (more years, inclusion of services, more
countries)
– Are there official sources for FDI by size class?
– Need to establish database linking innovation to
administrative/firm-level data
– Financial data by size class: sources ?Links with
other firm-level databases?
Session 3 – Business Profiling
• Covered current practice based on
questionnaire and country presentations
followed by developments in multinational
profiling
• Issues raised:
– The role of the business register in profiling
– Defining metrics for profiling based on impact
– Role of the global group in profiling, as
business does not recognise national
boundaries
Session 3 – Business Profiling
• Creation of organisational units that cut
across legal units
• Managing dynamic business structures
• Skills needed by profilers
• Controlling the quality of clerical profiling
• Role of profiling in reducing burden
• IT tools for profiling
• Sharing data between countries – a future
workshop?
Session 4
The four presentations of Denmark, Finland, Portugal and
Switzerland and the discussions of these presentations
resulted into the following general conclusions,
especially with a focus on data sharing between NSIs and
other government institutions:
• Information and Data sharing with administrative
institutions is an important topic for business registers
and will become even more important in the future
(response burden, e-government, etc.)
• The NSI have a privileged status as concerns access and
use of administrative data that other government bodies
do not have; this gives the NSI a certain responsibility in
the development of the government data system.
Session 4 (cont’d)
• The role of the NSIs in relation to coordination,
interface/integration and data sharing needs to be changed
from a mere customer requesting administrative data for
statistical purposes to a pro-active partner of the
administration, as well as the government bodies should not
only be seen as data provider.
• Even if legal constraints in the exchange or provision of
(individual) data to other government bodies or the public
may not be given, such an exchange or publication have to be
considered or reconsidered seriously as the trust in the NSI
should not be broken. On the other hand, the trade-off
between efficiency, reduction of burden and data secrecy
should openly be discussed and evaluated and obvious limits
be respected.
Session 5 (1/2)
• Several activities to improve Business
Registers
• Lot of common problems, no miracle
solutions
– Share information with other registers
– Standardisation of ID
– More communication
– New surveys
– New modules / tools
Session 5 (2/2)
– Use of linguistic science
• Future:
– Quality of BR as a central point
(Timeliness, Actualisation, Clarity of information,
Accessibility, Consistency, Modernisation)
– Eurostat Grants for 2009
Session 6a
Summary:
• The focus of session 6a was on "Entrepreneurship Indicators"
(employer business demography and high-growth enterprises)
and the timeliness of business demography data.
• Italy analysed the current measurement of high-growth
enterprises and demonstrated some of its weaknesses, such as
the 10 employee threshold which neglects about 95% of the
business population and leads to unequal weights of economic
activities in the data because of the different average size of
enterprises in different activities.
• The UK explained their work on the more timely release of
business demography data.
• The discussion focused on the delineation of the employer
business population and on a harmonised measurement of
employment in business demography.
Session 6a (cont’d)
Outlook:
• Italy was invited to share their findings of their ongoing work
on more meaningful measurement on high-growth enterprises
(composite indicators), bearing in mind a possible
implementation in all EU/OECD member states.
• The UK was invited to share their experience with obtaining
timely estimates of business demography data.
• More discussion on the measurement of employment in
business demography is necessary to further harmonise
employer business demography results; this is particularly
necessary before attempting a data collection on economic
enterprise births/deaths based on a 2-employee threshold.
Session 6b
• Integrating economic business statistics
with trade and other structural economic
statistics
• Linkages:
– Issues
• Coverage
• Estimate of unlinked units
– Level of aggregation
• Dimensions
Session 6 b (cont’d)
• Micro
– Data Cubes (Integrated Business Database)
» Confidentiality
» Deemed Employees
– Business Register link to other structural economic
statistics
– FRAMEWORK
– CONSULTATION
– INTERNATIONAL COMPARABILITY
» Common Concepts and Definitions
Session 6c
• The private data sources (DB and BvD) cannot be used
as the main source to produce outward FATS.
• The Italian presentation showed different problems that
may occur in each country and that need to be solved :
– When several sources of information are used, there is a need
to define priority rules
– For Inward FATS purposes : there is a need to clarify which
information is to favour between the country of the group head
and the country of the main decision center (headquarter).
– How to treat the truncated groups ?
– How to deal with natural persons as head of a group ?
•
Session 6c
• The role of EGR needs to be clarified:
– The EGR should be a tool for EU member states
to share information on EGs.
• Information and agreements on the characteristics of
the groups (Nationality, principal activity, size)
• Methodologies in the building of a groups’ register
– The EGR should be a sample base for surveys on
FATS
• It should include the operational structure of the
groups
•
Session 7a
• Review of OECD Accession Process
Israel
• Use of integrated survey, VAT, Tax and other
sources
• Ambitious program of Business Demography
Slovenia
• “Outsourced” business register and SORS became
user
• Extensive network of inputs
• Extending Business Demography data
Session 7b: BIICS countries
• Brazil:
– BRs since 1991; re-design in 2007
– Unique ID for enterprises and local units, good
coverage
– First publication in 2009, and first inclusion of
enterprise groups planned for 2009 and later
• China:
– BR update and Census
– Concept of basic units, coverage and concepts
– Legal units: 6,54 million; establishments: 8,3 million
– Economic Census 2004 (and 2008) as basis
Session 7b (cont’d)
• South Africa:
– No single ID, but matching algorithms
– Administrative and Business Sampling frame are
foundation for all economic statistical surveys
– Although single business ID is planned, practical
difficulties remain when trying to combine
different sources
– Quality management framework applied to BR
permitted better analysis (e.g. globalisationrelated indicators and performance measures
Session 7c
• NSIs of developed economies are engaged in
several BR-related cooperation and capacity
building projects with the developing countries.
• The reported experience by ISTAT on its on-going
cooperation project with the Tunisian NSI (that
aims in part to improve operation of the national
register of enterprises and to define the NACE
Rev.2-based national economic activity
classification), illustrated an overall need for:
– increased use of administrative sources
– well-designed “open” information system
Session 7c (cont’d)
• UK’s ONS reported on its findings resulting
from a capacity building project with the
NSOs of Armenia and Azerbaijan. The ONS
helps to develop a more comprehensive BR in
these countries, by sharing its practice on
how:
– to incorporate natural persons – individual
entrepreneurs - into the BR,
– to design a workable model of using these data for
sampling frames.
Session 7c (cont’d)
• UNECE, in its overview of the BR development
over the last four years in the countries of the CIS
region, pointed out to the need of harmonising
their methodological approaches with those
accepted internationally. CIS countries should
look for the best practices on:
– profiling of large and complex enterprises
– delineation of enterprise groups
– reviewing principal and secondary activity coding
– cooperation with central banks, commercial data
providers, etc.
Preliminary conclusions and
way forward
• CPRs:
– Country progress reports (CPRs) are rich tool
to detect common trends and future priorities
– BR integration, linking to trade, micro-data
are common themes
– System overhaul in some countries
– OECDs proposal to provide later synoptic
summary accepted
– CPRs to be maintained in future Wiesbaden
Group meetings
Preliminary conclusions and
way forward:
• BR is backbone of statistical system. As such,
it needs close co-operation with other
statistical departments
• It is very important to treat issues from both
producer and user perspective to ensure
continuous relevance
• Profiling is promising. It is recommended to:
– Adopt global perspective beyond EU (EGR)
– Statndardise applications (tools, documentation
etc.)
Preliminary conclusions and
way forward:
• The Group should continue to promote the
mutual benefits of data sharing and data
linking
– BRs as unifying tool lowers costs
– Data sharing means exploiting available data to
the fullest
– Quality framework standards and metadata
documentation should be permanently part of
work
– “Special cases” should be addressed in future
parallel sessions (different aspects of the same
case0
Preliminary conclusions and
way forward:
• Next meeting could have ½ day of parallel
session on specific theme (e.g. Special
Purpose Entities)
• Country Progress Reports should be asked
for 2009 by next convener (Estonia)
• An invitation for Developing Countries to
attend the 22nd meeting should be issued,
including funds to enable participation
(UN?)
Future work
The Steering Group will draft and circulate to
participants a priority list of themes and
issues for consideration. The Group will
benefit from a multi-annual work programme
Please note in your calendar:
The 22nd Meeting of the Wiesbaden Group will
take place in
ESTONIA ,
27-30 September 2010