Jean Ritzen

Statistics Netherlands

A. General developments at Statistics Netherlands (SN)

1. From 3 January 2004 onwards SN (CBS) has got a new status in the Dutch government structure. It is no longer part of the Ministry of Economic Affairs, but it gained the more independent status of ¡°Autonomous Agency¡±. CBS will remain financially dependent on the Ministry of Economic Affairs, but the budget will not longer be based on yearly assignments. It will depend on the approved long-range (4 years) statistical program. This program must be approved by the Central Commission of Statistics (CCS), which also has a new status. It controls not only the statistical program, but also the operations and budget of SN. This new status for SN and for the CCS is laid down in the new statistical law in The Netherlands.

2. At the end of 2004 another reorganisation of SN will be introduced. This is the result of discussions on

- the improvement of effectiveness and efficiency of processes;

- the re-orientation on the statistical program as a whole;

- the necessary measures to meet the budget cuts imposed by government.

Two interesting elements of this reorganisation deserve special mentioned here:

- a more than gradual shift in the distinction between the data collection and the statistical analysis stages. From experience we concluded that activities which directly relate to the assignment of the individual reports belong to the data collection process whereas some of these initially were part of the statistical analysis.

- The creation of a contact-centre at SN, to be used for data collection with individuals, households and enterprises. We distinguish inbound and outbound contacts with these respondents. Outbound means e.g. the reminders to respondents by telephone. Inbound means the helpdesk facility if respondent wants to contact the SN about data collection issues. It is not meant to disseminate statistical output. This is done by other facilities within SN.

There are not drastic changes for the BR-organisation itself.

B. Developments in the area of Economic Statistics

3. The first version 1.0 of the Basic Business Register (BBR), also called Comprehensive (administrative) became operational. Pending a final decision, it is managed and maintained by the central body of the Chambers of Commerce (VVK), so close to the trade register. Participants in the project are the VVK, SN, the tax authorities and the Social Security Organisation. More participants are foreseen. Data flows with information on changes at enterprises are now received regularly. Provisions to use these for updating the General Statistical Business Register (GBR) are being developed in the process of redesigning the GBR. These will result in replacing today¡¯s updating procedures using information from the trade registers. This will remain until the introduction of the redesigned GBR-system, according planning in 2006. The BBR will be of the utmost importance for integration of secondary data collection in coordinated input procedures. The use of information already available in administrative registers at governmental institutions is a spearhead of SN-policy, but is also compulsory from the CBS Law.

4. Pilots to experience and to test protocols in which B2G reports for statistics are send in via the Central Government Portal are being set up. These are pilots in some areas of short-term statistics. The functionality and the use of this portal will expand gradually. The introduction of XBRL will accelerate this approach, also for annual statistics as defined in European Structural Statistics Regulation. In the Netherlands the composition of the Dutch XBRL-taxonomy has started. The tax authorities, the Chambers of Commerce, and Statistics Netherlands participate in this process in which accountancy organisations play an important role.

5. Statistics Netherlands decided to participate in a national Business Portal for operational affairs of businesses on which important governmental information will be made centrally available (e.g. on taxation, licenses and statutory obligations). The first application from statistics will be on the explanation of the statistical law, so enterprises can easily be informed on their duties and on the consequences if they do not comply.

6. As it is the policy of Statistics Netherlands to use information from administrative registrations for statistics as much as possible, provisions and facilitating tools have to be explored and developed further, also related to the Baseline input database. The search to possible additional sources is going on.

C. The General Business Register

7. Statistics Netherlands and the Chambers of Commerce (via VVK) agreed on a new Convenant for co-operation from 2004. In this big attention is given to responsibilities of both institutions. Important issues are:

- co-operation in the further development of the BBR;

- the tasks and responsibilities in SIC-assignment. The Chambers are responsible for collecting basic information regarding administrative units. SN will have the responsibility for coding methodology and the application of this in assignment of the SIC code. In co-operation an automatic system to support the coding is under development.

- the introduction of the renewed NACE. The chambers have to play a major role in recoding and reclassifying according this new NACE. Although the introduction of the new NACE is foreseen for 2007 it takes a lot of energy and negotiations to prepare the recoding process.

- quality aspects of the information and resulting quality improvement projects.

 8. We can report on progress in the process of redesign the Business register:

- the BBR will serve as the main external source; procedures have been defined.

- the unit types and belonging characteristics are defined. These include the enterprise group which is an extension of the existing functionality with registering relationships with units abroad regarding main control.

- more emphasis will be given to dealing with events instead of signal handling. A full event approach leads to a more consistent update than a signal by signal approach;

- it was decided to split the functions of the GBR into more physical databases and under separate management. In the statistical database the focus is on statistical units and their statistical characteristics and the clear relationships with the sources. Deviating information for contacting businesses and other survey management information is in a related database/frame, which is logically part of the GBR. In our business architecture we distinguish GBR-tasks and tasks in data collection and statistics production.

- the development of algorithm for the delineation of statistical units from source units, e.g. legal and fiscal ones.

- automatic facilitating and supporting tools for profiling large and/or complex units according a top down approach in profiling to be decided on in the near future.

- using parameters priority rules are defined in the use of source information for units and/or characteristics.

- it is decided that that the statistical population frame will be defined each month.

9. Issues still under research for the redesign of the GBR:

- the definition of the period under consideration in defining an event. Principally a period of a month is the basis for this. The consequence is that not all information relating to an event is available at the end of the period.

- the issue of frame error correction procedures and features. Frame errors should be corrected as much and as early as possible, but without affecting the role of the GBR as a co-ordinated sampling frame. It must be possible to reconstruct populations used for sampling in the past later on. For this we consider adding an additional time-stamp in the BR. We already use: the date of event, the date of registration and the date of checking the information. The additional date will be the application date. This means that we can reconstruct the value of the variable applied for selecting and sampling at a date in the past.

- functionalities to link functional statistics to institutional statistics. An example is the functionality to link information on foreign trade with production statistics.