United Nations Economic Commission for Europe Statistical Division Data collection and the modernisation of official statistics

Steven Vale UNECE [email protected]

Contents

 Introducing UNECE  Modernisation and the High-level Group  How does data collection fit in?

Introducing UNECE Statistics

How do we work?

 Conference of European Statisticians • Gathering of chief statisticians since 1947  Open to all 193 UN member countries  And international organisations • Eurostat, OECD, IMF, World Bank, ILO etc.

 Bureau – Chief Statisticians of Canada (chair), Austria, Finland, Turkey, UK, Ukraine, Australia and Mexico

UNECE Statistics: Priorities

 Population censuses, migration, Millennium Development Goals  Globalisation, National Accounts, employment, business registers  Sustainable development, environmental accounts, climate change  Modernisation

Why is modernisation important?

In the last 2 years more information was created than in the whole of the rest of human history!

Making sense of the Data Deluge

Statistics fights back!

 High Level Group for the Modernisation of Statistical Production and Services (HLG) • • Created by the Conference of European Statisticians in 2010 10 heads of national and international statistical organisations

The Challenges

New competitors & changing expectations Increasing cost & difficulty of acquiring data Reducing budget Rapid changes in the environment Riding the big data wave Competition for skilled resources

These challenges are too big for statistical organisations to tackle on their own

We need to work together

HLG Vision

 Stay relevant by producing new and better products and services more tuned to the way the world operates today  Improved processes and methods to deliver products at minimal cost, with greater flexibility  Cooperation between organisations to improve efficiency and effectiveness  Establish a culture for change  Statisticians with new skills and knowledge

HLG strategy for modernisation

 Transform vision to reality  New sources and products  Streamlined processes  Managing organisational change to support modernisation and collaboration

HLG strategy for modernisation

 Transform vision to reality  New sources and products  Streamlined processes  Managing organisational change to support modernisation and collaboration

Conference of European Statisticians, June 2012

How the HLG works

 Meeting / teleconference every 3-4 months  Annual reports to Conference of European Statisticians  Annual workshops with around 30 expert groups • Review progress • Agree priorities  Time-boxed projects • “Agile” methodology – “sprint” sessions, virtual task teams, wikis, web conferences

Impact on data collection

 New sources • Admin data, Big Data, mixed sources  New methods • Web scraping, data mining, data integration  New modes • Web collection, mixed mode  New tools

Governance:

A new structure to focus on delivering change

Get involved!

Anyone is welcome to contribute!

More Information

• HLG Wiki: http://www1.unece.org/stat/platform/display/hlgbas • LinkedIn group “Business architecture in statistics”