Summary and Analyses of the Responses to the Questionnaire
Hugues Picard,INSEE, France
Jean Ritzen, Statistics Netherlands
How does the Business Register coordinate Economic Statistics or does it contribute to this? What are the advantages and the drawbacks of the various registers and of the various organizational positions of these in the different countries? What are the plans for future organizational developments and for future role and content of the Business Registers? These questions were at the basis of a questionnaire, the answers to which might induce some discussions during the Roundtable meeting and result in important issues for which more in-depth considerations could be made in future discussions and meetings.
The questionnaire was sent out to all known possible participants. Fifteen countries have responded (including six countries which will not be represented in the Beijing meeting). We are thankful to the respondents for the quality and the interests of their answers and remarks.
Introduction
A « Statistical Business Register » (SBR) is to serve the statistical processes as a part of them, which implies the work performed by the agents in charge of the SBR. Another important feature that influences their tasks is linked with the availability of information for the creation and the maintenance of the SBR. The SBR is not a file or list in its own, it should be seen as this file in combination with the belonging methodology to meet the goals. It is better to speak of a business register system. And this system is part of the total system of economic statistics.
What do statisticians expect from the SBR? An up-to-date list of statistical units, which is exhaustive, without double counting or falsely active units, including well-defined rules and procedures for maintenance and processing. This is the basic requirement. The features imply:
¡§ the creation of the statistical units the statisticians want to deal with;
¡§ the selection of a list or of statistical units according to some criteria of size and/or activity and/or location. These characteristics must be added to the statistical units for this reason;
¡§ inclusion of information on where to collect the relevant information for a selected or sampled statistical unit;
¡§ to be a benchmark for making the necessary adjustments or corrections when using administrative files in the production of statistics.
Besides these purely statistical purposes, some countries use the SBR also as a tool to manage and measure the statistical burden they impose upon enterprises. Here the SBR is also a tool for administrative management of data collection processes.
The main benefit of the ideal position and use of the SBR lies in the resulting quality of statistics. Good use results in full comparability of statistical output from different surveys regarding the same reference period, and good comparability of similar surveys over time (time series). Here we see the co-ordinating role of the SBR. This requires well-developed statistical methodology, and also discipline of statisticians who consider the quality of the whole package of statistical output above quality of the individual statistic they are responsible for.
The main challenge for the BSR agents is to transform into statistical information the data collected from surveys or from administrative declarations by legal units (natural persons or companies or parts of these) which declarations are legally based on accounting or social concepts. Sources of information are necessary for the creation and maintenance of an SBR These can differ for the different countries in availability, costs and effectiveness.
In most countries there is a special link between the SBR and the compilation of economic demographic statistics. Although in a perfect situation economic demographic statistics may be tabulated from the SBR directly, this is usually not the case because of SBR imperfections.
SBR imperfections also have repercussions for regular statistics based on the SBR. These can regard the units themselves and the characteristics assigned to the units. How to manage these imperfections is to be seen as an important issue, to be explored further. The survey was not intended to hold a survey on quality of the statistical business register or to find criteria for this. Quality aspects are dealt with in another session of the Roundtable meeting, although it is neither possible nor desirable to disregard quality aspects.
For international comparability of statistical output we need basic international co-ordination. Especially basic conditions need sufficient attention, as people realise when it comes to statistical business registers. Statistical business registers are on the agenda of e.g. the UN and Eurostat[1] . The annual Roundtable should be seen as a tool for discussion to reach further convergence on principles and to discuss new developments that are important for the SBR.
The sources for creating and updating the SBR
After reading the answers to the questionnaire, countries can be divided into three groups according to the data they have available for the construction and maintenance of the SBR:
1. the countries, which have no or very limited access to administrative files;
2. the countries which have access to administrative files and derive their SBR from these files. This group can be subdivided into two categories depending on whether one file has a pre-eminent role (usually a Tax Collecting Administration file) or more than one administrative file has an important role in the making of the SBR;
3. the countries, which have an official Business Register from which the SBR is derived. In this we see two categories again: countries where this register is kept in the statistical agency and countries in which this exists outside the statistical agency.
In general, the countries of the first group create their SBR from a (regular or not) Census of enterprises. The Census is organized so that the statistical units used in the country can be easily derived, and some questions to the respondents are used for creating the variables needed in the SBR, including the main activity code (and the principal secondary activity codes). The SBR is updated from the various annual surveys as well as from any information the SBR agents may collect from newspapers, telephone books, professional information or professional lists, etc.
The answers show the countries using administrative files do so to create and update the SBR. However, some of them use only one administrative file, generally the file of the Tax Collecting Administration, while others use several reference files, usually the Tax Collecting Administration file and one or several files from Social Security and National Health Insurance Administrations.
The agencies where an official administrative Business Register exists use this database as a reference, but they may also take some supplementary information available in other administrative files.
Generally, the information included in the reference administrative file or in the reference BR, even supplemented by other administrative files, is not sufficient to obtain all the information required in the SBR. This is particularly the case with regard to the construction of statistical units. Several solutions are applied:
¡§ contact the company and ask for the relevant information, which sometimes includes a request for an estimation of the value of consolidated data for the statistical unit (for example, turnover may not be totalized by adding for units in a cluster of linked companies within enterprise groups);
¡§ try to find information from various sources (existing surveys, newspaper, company reports,¡.) or make some imputation;
¡§ try to have one of the administrative data collectors (one of those the file of which is used for the SBR) include some special questions for the SBR in the regular administrative form that the companies have to fill in.
All these procedures have their drawbacks or may not be possible.
The statistical offices are reluctant to contact the companies, since this increases the statistical burden. Generally, only the major companies are contacted, usually within the framework of the profiling operations. But this procedure is not widespread for the time being: only half of the countries that answered the questionnaire declare making profiling; furthermore, some make it on a very narrow scale, but the great majority declare that developing profiling is in their plans for the future. For smaller companies, which are not profiled, some countries have designed specific rules (most of the time automatic) for constructing statistical units from the information they obtain on a regular basis from regularly used sources.
The second procedure is not very often cited. It is true that it cannot lead to an established procedure since the information arrives at random in the source consulted. However, the research of information in every place can lead to the improvement of the SBR, although unsystematically. In countries where the statistical agency has no access to administrative data and very limited resources for the SBR and for carrying out regular enterprise surveys, this is at least a valuable alternative for improving quality.
As to the third procedure, only a few statistical offices declare having some influence on the data collected by other administrative agencies for the establishment or maintenance of the BR. Some seek to obtain a good main activity code; in that case, close relations are established with the codifying administrative agency, with possibility of exchange of staff or design of common codification software. In one case, the tax agency is mentioned as the agency responsible for collecting information for statistical purpose only, thus for the Statistical Office. At last, one respondent indicates that the Statistical Office is involved in the definition of the legal units and in the delineation of local units, and participates also in the specification of some quantitative data collected in administrative forms, such as the number of employees.
The identification numbers
The registration of the identification numbers in the administrative files of the components of the statistical units is important in the process of creating and up-dating the SBR. The knowledge of these numbers eases the use of administrative files since the administrative unit(s) that have to be considered for obtaining relevant data for a given statistical unit are known. This is even more efficient when a unique identification number is used throughout the various administrative files used by the statisticians.
Half of the respondents to the questionnaire indicate that a unique identification number is used in most or all administrative files, and, in the majority of countries, this number is the one issued by the Tax Administration mostly. One country indicates that there is no unique identification number. Furthermore the question is not relevant for statistical offices that do not have access to administrative data. The issue not raised in the questionnaire, refers to the obligation by administrations to use a unique national identification number in the administrative files, and if so, the issue of the quality of the maintenance of the identification number by the various administrations.
The questionnaire also includes a question about the dissemination of the identification number of the SBR units. The answers indicate that this question is irrelevant, even when the statistical office issues the unique administrative identification number. For management reasons, a specific number identifies the statistical units, which may be the identifier of the administrative file or the administrative BR used to create and update the SBR only in the case of a one to one transposition from legal unit into statistical unit. Statistical units are units constructed for statistical purposes. Even if the SBR is public, these units only become important for companies if they also can obtain information on the administrative units as composing parts of these (legal units within enterprise groups, for example); some companies know also the statistical units resulting from the profiling of the group or sub-group to which they belong. So there is only one reason to provide the identification number in the SBR: this is the case when an administration agrees to include some questions on information for a statistical unit defined by the Statistical Office in its regular forms filled by businesses. But this all seems very theoretical and in many cases we are confronted with restrictions from confidentiality policy.
In some countries, a special administrative BR is established in the Statistical Office as an intermediate product between the administrative file(s) or the administrative official BR and the SBR. This is the basis for the construction and maintenance of the SBR. If the legal and other administrative units, which are included in this intermediate BR, are related to the SBR with a specific identification number, then there is no reason for the Statistical office to promote this number for use in administrative files. This remark, along with the previous explanations, clarifies why most of the responses to the question on the use of the SBR identification number in administrative files are ¡°never¡± or ¡°very rarely¡±.
What about the uses of the SBR in compiling statistics?
Most of the respondents declare that the SBR is used to follow a unit over time. Nearly all countries have defined continuity criteria for the units managed in their SBR. The distinction in the use of continuity rules for annual statistics and for sub annual statistics has not been indicated; this is an important issue however, since the procedures for dealing with continuity may not be the same, in particular because in the case of sub-annual series, which are to be obtained rather rapidly, all information for applying the continuity criteria may not be available.
The use of the SBR for amending data when processing administrative files is rather widespread or will be soon introduced. Only very few respondents have no plans in this direction (e.g. because of no access to administrative files). Three main issues in processing administrative files can be cited:
¡§ transformation of administrative data into statistical data; this is generally an application of the SBR reported by all users of data in administrative files for compiling statistics along the SBR;
¡§ control of exhaustiveness of the administrative file (and imputation for missing units); from the comments, it seems that this is a use of the SBR in statistical processing for almost all agencies who make use of data in administrative registers for compiling statistics. It is an exception that agencies do not make any control of exhaustiveness (in terms of missing units);
¡§ inclusion of supplementary information (not present in the administrative file but in the SBR) in the processing database for compiling statistics; some countries explicitly report the enrichment of the database with data included in the SBR (for example, addition of the number of persons employed to the data on turnover and profit derived from an administrative file). It may be concluded that this application is generally practised.
Most of the respondents declare the direct use the SBR for economic demographic analyses. In fact, the comments show that the ¡°direct¡± use of the SBR depends on what is included in the SBR. Furthermore, in order to obtain some demographic statistics, it may be necessary to gather information from other sources, besides the SBR (turnover, sub-classification of the official nomenclature distinguishing, for example, the various types of commerce,¡). In fact, some analyses may require a (special) sample survey, in particular if good statistics on death have to be obtained. It can be concluded that in countries where demographic statistics are compiled the SBR plays a major role for the purpose, but not the only one.
Lists and samples
As expected, at all agencies the SBR is the usual base for making lists of units according to specified groupings and for deriving sample frames for business surveys. Most agencies designed compulsory sampling procedures and part of these is also the use of the SBR as the sampling frame. The comments show that in many places, the samples are drawn by a specific unit (may be included in the SBR unit), which permits to coordinate (make consistent and integrate) the samples of the various economic surveys and ensures the control of the statistical burden on enterprises (few mentions). One country (Canada) mentions having a semi-centralized organization:
¡°BR creates a Statistical Universe File (SUF) for each business survey. It is based on the survey population characteristics (e.g. NAICS). Surveys select their sample from their SUF and return it to BR. BR creates a Survey Control File (SCF) for the survey to keep track of the units in the SUF, which have been sampled in the past, and those sampled at the moment. Surveys maintain contact information in BR. BR prepares a Statistical Interface File for collection arrangements. Surveys send BR a file of all records they actually contacted. BR uses this information to keep track of response burden and non-response. Surveys send survey feedback and, when data capture is finished, a file with response codes.¡±
Feedbacks from surveys
As to the survey feedback, it seems that information, which may lead to modifications in the SBR, is usually returned from the business surveys to the SBR. However, if this practice appears to be a rule, in many statistical agencies it may be limited to a small number of surveys, or left to the attention and willingness of the persons in charge of a given survey. It should be noted that the use of the feedback information is generally not transferred in automatic procedures: the eventual change in the SBR is firstly controlled and checked by the SBR agents.
Activity code
As to the activity code, there are various practices in assigning this code to the units and the corresponding responsibilities. At the creation of the administrative unit, the assignment of the activity code is initially made by the statistical agency in four of the thirteen responding statistical offices. For the other nine countries, the code is assigned by one or several non-statistical administrations. In some cases, there are official relations between these non-statistical agencies and the statistical office, in order to co-ordinate the decisions taken, because, in all countries, the statistical office can overrule the decision of the non-statistical agency. Of course, the statistical office is also responsible for the assignment of the activity code at the creation of the statistical units, which do not have a one-to-one correspondence with an administrative unit. Ultimately the statistical office itself is responsible for the quality of statistics and the quality of the assigned activity code as used in statistics. In practise a big dilemma is inherent in this statement. Basically groupings in classes are defined from the assignment of the activity code.
The initial codes are eventually modified, if (checking or verifying) information from various sources (surveys, newspapers, company reports,¡) becomes available. For many countries, the modification of the activity code in the SBR is done continuously in processing procedures including checking the information against already available information and plausibility checks; one country modifies the SBR once a month while four modify or adapt only once a year.
There are also differences in the production of sampling frames. Some countries prepare a ¡°frozen¡± version of the SBR once a year, which will be used to make the samples for the business surveys of that year, while other countries use the SBR as it is at the sampling date. In any case, the data on the date of the change of activity and the date of the introduction of the change in the SBR are included in most SBRs, which permits reconcililiation of the two procedures. The introduction of time stamping changes in the SBR gave a new dimension to the SBR for the use as a co-ordinated reference and sampling frame.
The question was raised on the consistency between the sampling frame and the statistical results of a given survey (what to do if the activity code of a unit obtained from a survey is different from the code in the sampling base from which the unit was sampled). There are divergent responses, however most respondents declare that they use the more up-to-date code in the processing of the survey. This is a major issue to discuss in the context of co-ordination economic statistics. The chosen solution can greatly affect the comparability of output of different statistics. In the questionnaire no distinction was made in real changes and non-real changes (corrections). It is a methodological issue how to deal with frame errors in survey procedures.
Major problems encountered
The responses for weak areas (question 4) and critical issues (question 5) can be dealt with together to provide a general view of the problems and challenges facing the SBR.
One of the main problems is how to gather sufficient information and how to define some new statistical units in order to provide statistics for a rapidly changing business world. Australia reports on flexibility in accommodating other selection or statistical units apart from those existing basically in the SBR. Canada stated, ¡°in a context of globalization, an increasing number of businesses are changing both their operational and their legal structure in order to reduce their operating expenses and maximize their profits. This leads to the formation of complex, multinational corporate families that pose a challenge for measuring national economic activity¡±. But even, some national business are organized according to not too formal linkages, at least non or partly financial linkages, such as nets, franchises, etc. It seems that most of the respondents opt for not creating new (types of) statistical units but for creating ¡°more flexible¡± SBRs. But, nobody reports how this can be done. The issue does not only regard the types or the composition of the units, but also the grouping criteria. An example is the request for information on the new-economy industry, whatever it may be. The role of the SBR in registering several types of links between units and the new or more flexible application of classifications for selection seem to be some important items for discussions in the near future, possible along the agenda of the future Roundtables.
Some operating rules have to be reviewed regularly as a consequence of the changing world, and also with links to the changes that occur naturally in the needs of the administration, which owns the BR or the file serving to create and update the SBR. This concerns continuity rules as well as profiling rules and other processing rules. Sometimes, a rule has to be modified rapidly, and all the consequences if the changes cannot be investigated sufficiently. After a while, the processing of the SBR is done using rules that are inconsistent and a complete revision is in order. What to do to avoid too many changes at once and to avoid undesirable consequences in the use of the SBR once the revised rules have been introduced?
As expected the persons in charge of the SBR are very careful about its quality. Consequently, many references are made to the problems related to quality.
One of the main issues is the quality of the assigned activity codes. The problem of the initial assignment has been examined earlier, but the main problem is the maintenance of this code for units that are rarely contacted because they are small, marginally active, or have an activity not usually investigated by statisticians. One important difficulty to be tackled as cited by Denmark but also valid in France, is the case of units organising their declarations in order to obtain the activity code they want, because this may lead to some advantages (subsidy, lower insurance premium,¡). More generally here we have the question of how to compile objective statistical information.
Similar worries are reported for other data collected or elaborated for inclusion in the SBR; cited once again are ¡°professions without employees¡±, ¡°some groups with high failure rate¡±, ¡°small firms¡±, ¡°local units¡± (in general). The quality referred to is for good statistics and, as mentioned in the Australian response: the ¡°drivers [of those who manage the base administrative file] are not the same as the [Statistical Office] business drivers, which can sometimes lead to differing priorities for quality improvement.¡± Furthermore, the law or the regulation, which implies the variables asked in the administrative form, may change in such a way that variables are no longer collected or are modified in their definition or content¡.
In a few countries the pure administrative changes and their impact on the SBR lead to a lack of confidence of certain statisticians in the statistical qualities of the SBR. This is a problem to be solved by the top management of the Statistical Office, but such support does not exist everywhere. The issue of how to improve service to the users is cited by US Bureau of Census: it is fundamental for having their confidence; the accesses to the SBR must be easy (good software, special files) and the SBR operators must have tools to answer requests of users rapidly. The conclusion must be that users should be involved in decision making in SBR matters if these affect statistical output or quality. Stability and continuity are very important for statisticians, especially in the case of non-real events, which must be eliminated as early as possible.
Some respondents indicate the time lag between an event and the subsequent modification of the SBR. Most declare that they are currently looking for improvements in this matter.
The attention is also drawn to the fact that ¡°any change in the main components of the Register must be implemented with great care, since the repercussions may affect many surveys, some of them adversely¡±. This is really a problem, which becomes more important as the system of business statistics gets integrated in most countries. For instance, in France, the re-engineering of the SBR is considered to have perhaps more impact on related statistical processes than the passage to year 2000 or the change from national currency to euros in 2002, because of costs and efforts to modify the many linked applications.
Another unsolved problem, which may never be completely solved, is the coherent use of the coordination of short-term statistics and structural statistics. For some respondents, the quality characteristics of the SBR are not the same for each of the two uses. Others seem to believe that there can be some common intermediate solution leading to a common tool. Another issue to be put on the agenda of the Roundtable!
Some other issues or problems are cited, which are important:
¡§ good software for managing the SBR,
¡§ the lack of tools linked to the SBR for measuring and controlling the statistical burden,
¡§ the difficulty for including and processing units in the agriculture industry,
¡§ the difficulty for including and processing units in the public sector,
¡§ the inclusion of meta data in the SBR,
¡§ the integration of feedbacks to the SBR both in the processing of a given survey and in the processing of the SBR,
and, of course, the absence of access to administrative files, especially tax files.
SBR cannot be maintained on its own. Within budget conditions of all statistical agencies SBR must be maintained using administrative sources. To reach the best possible quality, administrative agencies should be more aware on their responsibility for quality of statistical output they are serving. From modern quality concepts show that this requires good relationships between statistical agencies and administrative agencies who serve as sources, in the context of this paper as sources for the SBR especially.
Future organization
As to the place of the SBR within the framework of the organization of business statistics system, the main conclusions are:
1) the present or future organization vary greatly from one country to another, and no general organization can be concluded
2) however, practically all countries are reviewing their organizations towards a more integrated system, where all sources are used (whether administrative files or surveys) in a co-ordinated manner so that the information collected in one source can be used by most statisticians; in these future systems, the SBR will have an important co-ordinating role (sampling base, sampling, burden). Certainly, even if this is not cited by anybody, there will also be a database where many detailed results will be stored.
3) because of reasons of efficiency and ICT-evolution, statistical processes are being changed continuously. Mixed mode approaches in data collection in combination with more and more uses of data from administrative files for compiling statistics require a good and stable reference. This must be the SBR. Not only the statistical units and their characteristics as such are very important, but also and maybe more the facilitating of variables for matching (e.g. unique identifier for number) are important to translate from administrative concepts into statistical concepts and for guaranteeing the comprehensiveness of data, so no omissions and no double countings. For the SBR it is a big challenge to evolve simultaneously with other developments in methodology, data availability and ICT.
4) The Statistical Business Register should evolve into a fully mature partner in statistical processes. It must have authority in its role, supported by the top management.
Conclusion: production of statistical information with the co-ordination by the SBR:
1) One or a limited number of sources are selected for the review and the maintenance of the SBR.
The difference between review and maintenance comes from the fact that certain sources, such as economic censuses, are used for a complete revision of the SBR, while others, such as the VAT file or annual sample surveys, are used for permanent updating.
The sources are selected so that both the construction and maintenance of statistical units and the updating of the characteristics and variables linked to these units can be done. The sources have certain continuity over time so that their processing can be described for some time to the SBR agents, and there is continuity in the construction of units and calculation of the variables linked to them.
The sources are official Business Registers or files established on a regular basis by administrations, such as the Tax or Social Security administrations. Generally, some kind of contract with the owner of the source information, who engages to provide the source information regularly, while the SBR engages to use the source only for the SBR and guarantees the confidentiality required by the ¡°owner¡± of the source information.
If these sources do not exist or are not available, annual surveys are designed. But, even in case of availability of administrative sources, the SBR may make some inquiries when some data necessary for the processing is lacking. The inquiry may be made at the moment the information is required or through a regular survey designed for the SBR.
The special enquiries include the specific operations made within the profiling of groups or of complex enterprises.
Besides the regular sources, if some punctual information of major importance is obtained, it is generally not neglected. But here we see a major issue of good procedures for processing in a way that is not conflicting with requirements from co-ordination.
Note that, in the selection of the sources and when deciding for punctual or regular enquiries, attention is paid to the information to be used to calculate or to verify the main activity code.
Some sources are available rather a long time after the period they cover, which implies that they are not used, or a (long) delay in the production of the SBR, or the production of ¡°provisional SBRs¡± using imputations and as much information as there exist at the time they are produced.
2) The SBR processes the information
The outcome of this processing is made of one or several registers covering information to derive the statistical units in use in the country. For each unit, a certain number of characteristics and variables are presented.
The products of the processing ensure some guarantees of quality to the users, the criteria for quality being well known: all active units are included (no omission), there are no non-active units (no falsely active units), one active unit is registered only once (no repetition), the characteristics and variables for a given unit are accurate, the date to which the unit and its linked characteristics and variables refer are not too far back in time (freshness of information).
Of course, the criteria are much more important for greater units than for smaller: their impact on the computations of statistics is more important. Therefore, much care and detailed specific procedures are used with major units, while much more simple and automatic procedures are used for smaller units. In preparing statistical investigations this is especially important in dealing with frame errors to eliminate these. For this a special SBR methodology is required.
The characteristics and variables for the units are such that:
a) the unit (or its component administrative units) can be easily found in administrative files (e.g. linkage variables for identifying and matching);
b) the address of the person (natural or legal) to contact for obtaining information on the unit is present;
c) groups of units (several types) by juridical category and/or by industry and/or by size and/or by geographical location can be made;
d) samples of units according to usual variables (juridical category, industry, size, geographical location, ¡) can be done
e) there is an indicator of continuity of the unit for time to time indicators;
f) comparability of outcomes from several or different surveys is facilitated;
g) there is a possibility to make economic demographic analyses;
h) there are indications (meta data) on the quality and the freshness of the data (in particular, the date from which the information is valid is of major importance).
Besides this traditional information, the Register needs inclusion of data on the links of various types (financial, contractual, joint venture, sub contracting,¡) between units, so that there is a possibility to construct new units representing better the actual world or the actual position of firms in a continuous changing world. In relation with this, it is important to insist upon the timeliness in the processing of the SBR, in order to represent the universe as it is and not as it was some two or three years ago.
In fact, there are two types of SBR to consider: the present SBR and the ¡°historic¡± SBR. In the latter are included time-stamped data for each unit that has been active once, all events that occurred, as well as the series of values of the linked variables (of course, this information is time-stamped). The events included are the various changes as a consequence of re-structuring, take-overs, splitting, and so on. They are characterized by ¡°predecessor-successor¡± links between some units.
Historical data in the register are not necessary for interesting information but to facilitate in high quality statistical processes ending in high quality statistical output which is fully consistent an reliable.
The SBR is more often used to control the statistical burden on the reporting units. The corresponding processing is, of course, not part of the processing of external sources, but should be cited.
3) The statisticians¡¯ use of the SBR
The primary use is the selection of all the units according to certain characteristics. This list may then be:
¡§ a benchmark when using administrative files to derive some statistics; in this case, the use is (i) to determine the units, which should be in the administrative file and (ii) to, eventually, impute the value(s) of the data the missing unit would have had in the administrative file according to certain of its characteristics.
¡§ sampling base when a business survey is to be conducted; it appears that, in many places, the statisticians are obliged to use the SBR as the reference for preparing their sampling base; furthermore, in some places, the sampling procedure is decided and the sampling itself is made in the same unit. To serve as a sample base implies many aspects:
a) From a full list of statistical units a sample must be drawn according sampling methodology;
b) All sampled units have a grossing up factor to get population statistics;
c) The sampled units are supplied to the survey organisation including contact information and survey management information.
d) The population statistics from the survey are to be related to the population figures as such. This is an important issue for discussion. In many cases the population figures can not be calculated from the SBR because of frame imperfections, especially for the smaller units. This leads to the question what figures should be used as so-called co-ordinated population figures or co-ordinated population estimates. In som countries some progress has been made in development of methodology for this, related to methodology in economic demographic statistics.
For all units, the SBR can supplement information that is not collected in a survey or not asked in the administrative questionnaire at the basis of the administrative file.
The continuity indicator and the ¡°predecessor-successor¡± parts of the SBR are used in the procedure permitting the time-to-time comparisons of two aggregates or permitting the calculation of time series.
The SBR serves as the frame for combining information from several and different sources and supporting complex methodology inherent in this.
In some agencies we can conclude that the SBR operates as an integrated part of statistical processes. The SBR is to be considered as a SBR-system, that means the combination of SBR-file, SBR-methodology in broad sense and SBR organisational position. Also the use of the SBR for administrative survey management belongs to this system. Examples are form dispatch, response control and response burden control.
A direct use of the SBR is for economic demographic analyses dealing with some of the units included in the SBR. Note that the interest of demography is geared toward the changes in the structure of the economic organization, with creations in certain ¡°new¡± industries replacing disappearance in ¡°old¡± industries. In many cases, the creations deal with small units, which implies that contrary to expectation in other economic statistics, care should be taken for small entities as well as on large ones. As mentioned before in the context of population statistics and co-ordinated population estimates, it may be the case that some types of analyses require more information than included in the BR, which can be obtained from other sources including business surveys (survey on the conditions of business creation and on the motivations of the creators, for example). Here we also see a interesting field of tension. As a base for statistics one could argue that it is most important to give focus to the large enterprises, but for economic demography small enterprises are most important, except in merger and de-merger.
In the matter of statistical uses of the SBR for selecting or sampling, decisions are taken as to whether to use a ¡°frozen¡± version at the beginning of a given period (year, for example) or the latest version, or something in between. The decision is based on considerations on comparability of results of processing, period to which the results refer, short term or structural statistics.
4) The statisticians send feedback from processing to SBR
A by-product of the processing of the administrative file is a check for the quality of the SBR: units missing in the file (discontinuation being one of the possible explanations), units present in the file and not in the SBR (to be eventually added to the SBR), values of the characteristics different in the file and in the SBR (to be eventually corrected in the SBR). The processing of the business surveys also leads to feedback to the SBR: possibility of discontinuation of a unit, validity of the variables.
The SBR checks the returned information. Additions to, deletions from and modifications to the SBR are subject to rules, which take into account the requirements of the statisticians. If these modifications are introduced in the current SBR, they should be taken into account with their date of validity (which implies that this date must be obtained either from the source which detected the change to be done or by interrogating the unit concerned).
The next questions is whether to modify the sampling bases, the ¡°frozen registers¡± (in this case, only if an error has be detected, or even the initial codes and values used in a survey. Should the activity code of the unit be changed for the processing of a survey if the code obtained from the survey is different from the code existing in the sampling base?
Another feedback, often required, to the SBR is the status of the response from the sampled units. This permits us to centralize the information on the surveys to which a unit has responded and also the cases of non-responses by a unit. This permits us to measure the statistical burden on enterprises, and, as a consequence, to organize the samplings in order not to impose too heavy a burden on reach potential respondent.
The limitation of statistical burden is also done a priori, by a control of the sampling in a centralizes unit. For this the SBR or its direct related systems can be used in the context of survey control.
Comprehensiveness and quality of the SBR
In the survey for this session we did not give explicit focus on quality of the SBR. Nevertheless comments and remarks were given in the context of weak areas, unresolved problems and critical issues.
Often mentioned critical issues are the assessment of statistical units and the quality of (right) SIC-codes according objective information and rules. Both are very influencial factors in quality of statistical output and in co-ordination aspects. Statistical agencies must rely on administrative sources, so good relationships are important. These common interests can be explored and common efforts can be started for improvement. Statistical offices can offer methodology that benefits the quality in administrative files too.
From the survey we cannot draw conclusions on major problems regarding missing groups in the SBR generally, except in some countries for agriculture and professions. But the services industry is not generally mentioned as more problematic than other industries. Small enterprise information is difficult to keep up to date in the SBR however.
Final conclusion and remarks
Many issues are to be elaborated further of which very important ones are:
¡§ fixed code issue
¡§ the need for and use of historical information in the SBR and what information and dates are applicable here?
¡§ unit control and well developed procedures for defining statistical units
¡§ frame error correction or acceptance
¡§ SIC-code assignment procedures and responsibilities
¡§ SBR-population figures or co-ordinated population estimates?
¡§ continuous quality insights
¡§ the partnership of the SBR in the whole context, including the SBR-authority
As a finishing statement for the Roundtable we can ask the question:
how do we see the role, place and function of a SBR in 2010 and how can we meet the goals and requirements then. For improvement of imperfections in 2005 or 2006 we only can trouble shoot. But for 2010 solutions we can learn from the today imperfections and insights.
Annexes
Annex to this paper: Answers of the fifteen responding agencies on the closed questions by question
In a separate annex 1 the responses of the individual responding agencies are summarized
In a separate annex 2 the constructed diagrams of the position of the SBR are presented.
A. Answers of the fifteen responding agencies on the closed questions by question.
|
1a. Is the BR used to link administrative and statistical units? |
1 |
14 |
|
Never, seldom |
Usually, always |
|
1b. Is the statistical Agency involved in the standardisation of administrative entities and variables that are used in the making and updating of the BR? |
4 |
7 |
4 |
|
Never |
Seldom |
Usually |
|
1c1. Is the BR identification number for administrative units used in some, many or most of the administrative files? |
2 |
3 |
6 |
3 |
|
Never |
Some |
Most |
All |
|
1c2. Is the BR identification number for statistical units used in the administrative files? (Not applicable: 1) |
7 |
4 |
3 |
|
Never |
Some |
Many, most |
|
1d1. Are the data in the BR used to follow up a unit over time (the issue of continuity)? |
2 |
12 |
|
Seldom |
Usually, always |
|
1d2. Does the BR include a generally used criterion for continuity? |
1 |
14 |
|
No |
Yes |
1e1. Is the BR generally used by statisticians as a base for amending data during the processing of administrative files? |
4 |
3 |
8 |
|
Never |
Seldom |
Usually |
|
1e2. Does the BR have a role in the process of transforming administrative data into statistical data? |
2 |
4 |
8 |
|
Never |
Seldom |
Usually |
|
1f1. Is the BR generally used by statisticians as a source for making lists of units pertaining to a given grouping (industry, region, etc.)? |
15 |
|
Usually |
|
1f2. Is the BR used for obtaining sample frames in business surveys? |
15 |
|
Usually |
|
1f3. Is there an official procedure for sampling from the BR? |
5 |
10 |
|
No |
Yes |
|
1f4. Are statisticians obliged to use the BR to obtain their sampling frames for statistical business surveys? |
3 |
7 |
5 |
|
No |
Usually |
Always |
|
1g1. Is the BR used in enterprise profiling exercises? |
1 |
5 |
9 |
|
Never |
Seldom |
Usually, always |
|
1g2. Is profiling of large enterprises part of the BR updating system? |
2 |
4 |
9 |
|
Never |
Seldom |
Usually, always |
|
1h. Are economic demographic analyses compiled directly from BR information? |
5 |
10 |
|
No |
Yes |
|
2. Is the BR used as a co-ordinating database, where a small number of variables, in use in most operations, are kept up to date using information supplied by users? |
1 |
4 |
10 |
|
Never |
By a small number of users |
By most users |
|
3a. Which agency is in charge of assigning the activity code to the units initially? |
10 |
5 |
|
Administrative agency |
Statistical Office |
|
3b. Is the activity code of a statistical unit kept fixed during a month, quarter or year in the BR?
(1 non respondent) |
8 |
1 |
4 |
|
Not kept fixed |
Month |
Year |
|
3c. If it appears, from a survey information, that the BR activity code is wrong, is the code changed in the processing of the survey results or will the wrong code be kept in these results? |
10 |
4 |
|
Not kept |
Kept |
|
6a. Is there now, or are you moving towards, a coherent organisation of business economic statistics in your country? |
2 |
13 |
|
No |
Yes |
B.Comments included in the Questionnaire
On the co-ordinating role of the Business Register in Economic Statistics
1. Procedures and uses
1a. Is the BR used to link administrative and statistical units?
Explanation: The BR operators update the BR from administrative sources, which include legal and/or local legal units. Their work is to use these data to create, or to provide information to facilitate creation of, statistical units such as enterprises, enterprise groups, local units and their related basic characteristics (economic activity, size class, etc.).
Australia:
The ABS uses the Australian Taxation Office - Australian Business Register (ABR-ATO) to identify new businesses as they register for an Australian Business Number (ABN). The ABN is a single identifier for use in dealings with the Tax Office and other government agencies. The ABS BR has adopted a two population model in which the more complex and significant units are maintained in the ABS maintained population. The statistical unit is based on a type of activity unit (TAU) which links to an enterprise. These can be grouped into enterprise groups. BR operators regularly profile these units and update the group structure and associated statistical information. A number of ABNs could be associated with an enterprise.Simpler units remain in the ATO maintained population, with the ABN being used as the statistical unit
Diagram 1 ABSMP Statistical Units Model
Canada:
The main source of information to feed/update BR is administrative data coming from the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA). Every business in Canada must register with CRA. The CRA ID called BN (Business Number) is one of the major keys on the BR. Once a BN is added on BR with all its characteristics, a statistical unit is automatically generated. For simple enterprises, the relationship between the administrative and statistical unit is 1 to 1. For complex enterprises, the link is maintained but there are many more statistical units created for one administrative unit to satisfy our statistical requirements.
Denmark:
The Danish Statistical Business Register (SBR) is integrated with the Administrative Business Register (ABR) in the way that SBR contains an online updated copy of ABR. SBR contains more unit types and more data that the ABR. There is a relation between the legal units in the ABR and the enterprises in the SBR and between local legal kind of activity units in the ABR and local kind of activity units (LKAU) in the SBR. These relations are utilized to create a new enterprise or a new LKAU, respectively, in the SBR when a new legal unit or a new local legal kind of activity unit, respectively, is registered in the ABR.
These automatic creations of units can be overruled by the staff of the SBR.
For the enterprises we do not attempt to keep track of ¡°real¡± continuity in the SBR. ¡°Overruling¡± of the automatic creating of enterprises is therefore very seldom done. The statistics on enterprise demography is worked out in a statistical system outside the SBR.
In the SBR we do try to keep track of "real" continuity for local kind of activity units (LKAU). This is done by using some automatic rules which are built into the ABR-system (for local legal kind of activity units). The outcome of these rules can be overruled by the staff of the SBR, and it is done in a number of cases. The rules are based on information on owner, address and activity code for the local legal kind of activity unit and as well new registrations as changes of attributes for existing local legal kind of activity units are examined through the automatic processes of the ABR.
Finland:
Legal units and their identification codes are received from administrative register.
Local kind of activity units, local units and enterprise group units are created in BR. Also their identification codes are generated in BR.
Legal units = Enterprise units.
France:
Besides the basic characteristics, the BR operators manage another information fit for linking administrative and statistical units through the "economic consistency" approach :
- a variable "economic status" indicates whether the local unit is "economically active" (that is : whether it operates means of production)
- a variable "employer" indicates whether there are employees
- there is a link set between the operating local unit and the local unit(s) which provide it with the means of production
Germany:
Usually we use administrative files to update data of the BR. We also use some characteristics out of these files to draw up statistical units. For example in case of VAT groups (consisting in one parent company and at least on subsidiary company) we use the administrative turnover of the whole VAT group in order to estimate the turnover for every single subsidiary company. The results are subsidiary companies as statistical units.
Hong Kong:
The BR operator gets information from the tax Administration, and updates, enriches the information of the business records concerned. With the additional and updated information, statistical reporting units (at establishment level) can be found and maintained in the BR. Survey takers may use or reorganise the BR to facilitate data collection work having regard to the requirements of individual surveys.
Ireland:
Ireland receives a file from the VAT authorities of VAT registered cases, we match this file against the Business Register and then birth onto the Register as enterprises those VAT numbers that have been detected as new to the Register.
As part of the birthing process, a statistical unit structure (Ent-KAU- Local unit) is generated so you can link the statistical unit to the administrative unit.
A problem in Ireland is that VAT is not comprehensive so we must look at other administrative units.
Italy:
No comment
Macao:
The statistical Business Register (the ¡°FAE¡±) is a comprehensive database which contains information on enterprises and establishments and is maintained by the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) of Macao SAR.
The ¡°FAE¡± includes all legal units that participate in different economic activities of Macao within the scope of the Macao Economic Activity Classification ¨C CAM-Rev.1 and are registered in the Finance Services Bureau (which is also a major source for updating its maintenance).
Regularly, we download information from administrative files of the Finance Services Bureau and, through the administrative ID number, links are established to match the updating information.
Administrative files from other government departments also contribute to the updating of the ¡°FAE¡±.
Mexico:
We don´t use administrative sources to update de BR.
Netherlands:
Like statistical units, administrative units are composite units. E.g. an unit for incorporated taxes may include a consolidation of the results of a cluster of legal units. The BR offers functionalities to link the administrative and statistical units. Those links can be simple, but alsso complex e.g. n:m relationships. On the basis of those compiled links administrative data are processed towards data on the level of statistical units.
Portugal:
At INE-PT, we use administrative sources to create enterprises. Nevertheless till now enterprises are considered equal to active legal units.
Spain:
Once a year, the BR is updated by several input sources. These sources include mainly, information from tax and social sources, private sources (Dun&Bradstreet Database) and statistical sources (structural surveys). The BR links the administrative units with the statistical units computing their basic characteristics like economic activity and size codes according to number of employees.
USBoC:
No comment.
1b. Is the statistical Agency involved in the standardisation of administrative entities
and variables that are used in the making and updating of the BR?
Explanation: The statistical Agency may participate in the definition and usage of concepts that are included in administrative systems (for example, how turnover is recorded or how the persons employed are counted, etc.). In some cases (as in France), the statistical Agency may be (generally) the one that defines the boundaries of local legal units.
Australia:
There is a strong relationship between the ATO and ABS. ABS is involved in a number of projects with ATO to ensure that classifications and definitions of key data items are consistent. Meetings are held every quarter to progress matters of mutual concern.
While the definitions used by the ABR are ATO definitions, ABS has provided feedback to ABR-ATO on the ABR registration form redesign. ABR-ATO uses the ABS ANZSIC classification to code businesses to an appropriate industry activity class. ABS is currently investigating the ATO - type of business entities to clarify their definitions and to improve alignment with the ABS - type of legal organisation classification. This work will also improve the derivation of other ABS classifications such as level of government, public/private and standard institutional sector classification (SISCA).
Metadata of ATO definitions is being compiled as part of a larger data management project involving the ABS input data warehouse (IDW).
Canada:
Statistics Canada is not directly involved in the standardisation of the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) administrative entities. CRA, our major source of updates, is an independent federal agency as is Statistics Canada and defines its own concepts for its own purposes. However, for industry coding there is an agreement between the two agencies that:
1. The Statistical Agency is the authority for industry coding (the NAICS code itself was developed by the Statistical Agency) and is responsible for assigning codes to all businesses.
2. Towards this end, BR and CRA developed jointly a software for CRA to collect a description of activity detailed enough to be coded at the NAICS ¨C 6 digits level. These descriptions are sent to BR for coding by Statistics Canada and subsequently returned to CRA.
Statistics Canada has the opportunity to express their data needs and to influence the level of details of some variables collected by the Revenue Agency but the final decision is always made by CRA.
Denmark:
Statistics Denmark is very much involved in the definition of the local legal kind of activity unit and in the continuity rules for this unit type, as we in fact have made both definition and continuity rules. The fact that this unit type relates to the legal unit (instead of the enterprise) is the only distinction between the statistical recommendations and the concepts used in the Administrative Business Register.
For the legal units, Statistic Denmark is not involved in the concepts used (at least not for the private sector)
Finland:
Statistics Finland and Tax Administration have agreed of the standard data content of Business accounts and Balance sheet. Data collection is effective and response burden of respondents is minimised.
Tax Administration applies the official SIC 2002 Finland classification (=NACE2002) in the legal register of legal units. This is very useful for BR of the Statistical Office, because for the smallest units we use this classification code direct and we do not check it by ourselves.
The more significant units we survey in every case.
France:
More than involved, the INSEE was assigned to manage the standardization of legal and local units, coordinating for that a partner network.
As to variables, the INSEE is entrusted with the managing of the activity and the legal status nomenclatures ; it is also involved in the standardisation of the number of salaried persons.
Germany:
The official statistics in Germany don¡¯t exert any influence on administrative authorities.
Hong Kong:
The information obtained from the administrative records of the tax Administration are confined to name and address. Economic activity and size class data are either not available or not exact (therefore not ready for use at all). The management and maintenance of the administrative records are the responsibilities of the tax Administration and there are rather strict restrictions as to how data items in the administrative records can be changed, qualified or enriched. The statistical Agency has yet to find opportunity of increasing involvement in this respect.
Ireland:
No involvement with the varoius administrative agencies.
Italy:
Italian legislation allows Istat to take part in administrative questionnaires drafting (or variable classifications and definitions) for those sections (or variables) that can be useful for statistical purposes.
In practice Istat is still working to enforce this rule through the realisation of formal agreements with each administrative body
Macao:
The DSEC is not involved in the standardization of administrative entities and variables that are used in the making and updating of the ¡°FAE¡±, due to legal constrains.
However, most of the administrative variables (variables in administrative files) used in the ¡°FAE¡± keep their original names and contents; also there is a common unit (legal/legal local unit) ID number shared among administrative files, which facilitates the updating process.
Mexico:
INEGI is promoting use of the SCIAN clasificator in the production of statistical information.
Netherlands:
Statistics Netherlands (SN) is involved in the development of the single business register (SBR), including the definition of units and characteristics. Another example is participation in a national project for a complete redesign of the processes regarding Social Security.
Portugal:
The statistical agency is responsible for the standardization of statistical definitions and concepts.
All questionnaires that are developed by delegate bodies should follow statistical criteria.
Nevertheless administrative bodies sometimes use different concepts.
Spain:
The statistical Agency works in collaboration with the tax authorities. The statistical Agency is not involved in the standardisation of administrative entities but it is involved in the standardisation of variables that are used in the making and updating of the BR.
USBoC:
The Census Bureau (statistical agency) makes suggestions and requests to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS - tax agency). The final decision rests with the IRS.
1c1. Is the BR identification number for administrative units used in some, many or most of the administrative files?
Explanation: The BR identification number for administrative units may not be the responsibility of the statistical Agency but be managed by the tax Administration.
Australia:
As the major component of the ABS Business Register is the ATO maintained population (99%), the ABN is used as the primary identifier of a business.
Canada:
BR ID for administrative units is the CRA ID for administrative data. It is managed by CRA. This ID is one of the most important ID on BR files. The BR also maintains separate Id numbers for ¡°frame¡± entities for the purposes of statistical activities with linkages to the administrative entities.
Denmark:
The identification number for the administrative units
- legal units and local legal kind of activity units
- are used all over the public sector for communication with the business units.
Finland:
The ID of legal units (managed jointly by Tax Administration and Trade Register) is in very common use in Finland.
Also the ID¡¯s of other units (Local Units, EGs, etc, managed by BR of Statistical Office) are ¡®not confidential¡¯, but they are not in general use in administrative registers (because these units do not exist in adm. registers).
France:
In the light of the so-called "loi Madelin" law, the public institutions have no right to ignore the BR identification number of the administrative units they deal with.
Therefore, the BR identification number are registered in most of the administrative files, but they are not always used as the main ID-code.
Germany:
Our BR identification number is a self-developed register identification number. It won¡¯t be used in administrative files. The implementation of a uniform identification number for economic units of almost all administrative agencies is scheduled for the year 2005.
Hong Kong:
Most but not all
Ireland:
Question is not clear to me
Italy:
Administrative units are identified by the Fiscal Code available in all Administrative Sources
Macao:
The administrative unit ID number managed by the Finance Services Bureau is shared also by some other government administrative files. As one of the identification variables in the ¡°FAE¡±, the administrative identification number (the ¡°External ID number¡±) is the same as in their sources files, and they are not in the responsibilities of our Service.
All units registered in the ¡°FAE¡± have their unique identification numbers, the statistical identification number (NIA), for internal use only. The NIA numbers link the enterprises to their local units (establishment), and are managed in accordance with the continuity rules for both enterprise and local units.
Mexico:
The BR identification number is used only for INEGI.
Netherlands:
No comment.
Portugal:
The identification number for tax purposes is managed by the Tax administration and it is also used as BR identification number.
Spain:
The BR identification number for administrative units is managed by the tax administration. Each legal unit is linked to a tax identification number that is the same in all administrative sources.
USBoC:
The BR contains both the tax agency¡¯s identification number and the Census Bureau¡¯s identification number on most files. The tax agency does not have access to the Census Bureau¡¯s identification number.
1c2. Is the BR identification number for statistical units used in the administrative files?
Explanation: The BR identification number for statistical units is the responsibility of the statistical Agency.
Australia:
See above. The more complex and significant units are ABS maintained. There are identifiers to accommodate the type of activity unit (TAU), enterprise (EN) and enterprise group (EG). These are solely used by the ABS. The ABN is used for the remainder of the population with the exception of some farm units.
Canada:
BR statistical ID is never used in CRA administrative files. The agreements between the two departments are designed to ensure the protection of the privacy and confidentiality of the statistical program.
Denmark:
The identification number of the statistical units is only used by Statistics Denmark.
The only exemption is the serial number of LKAUs, which Statistics Denmark has attached to each LKAU within an enterprise. This number is through an agreement between Statistics Denmark and the Tax and Customs Authorities collected for only statistical use by the Tax and Customs Authorities together with their collection of the annual wage forms.
For tax reasons employers yearly have to fill in a wage form for every employee. Besides the information for tax use, the wage form has a field for filling in the serial number of the LKAU at which the employee was working. The data are collected by the Tax and Customs Authorities but the piece of information on LKAU-serial number is not used for administrative purposes but just passed over to Statistics Denmark.
Finland:
Usually not, see 1c1 above.( Also the ID¡¯s of other units (Local Units, EGs, etc, managed by BR of Statistical Office) are ¡®not confidential¡¯, but they are not in general use in administrative registers (because these units do not exist in adm. registers)).
France:
The BR identification number for statistical units is the same as the BR identification number for administrative units.
Germany:
No. The self-developed register identification number is not used in other administrative files.
Hong Kong:
Most but not all. In the case of Hong Kong, there is only one kind of statistical unit, called establishment, in the BR (though other statistical units may be formed by individual survey takers after obtaining information about this basic unit from the BR ¨C a process they call ¡°frame restructuring¡±). The basic statistical unit (i.e. establishment) is equivalent to the administrative unit managed by the tax Administration as described in Question 1c1. The BR, called Central Register of Establishments (CRE), only support a single level of organizational structure of a business undertaking, i.e. establishment.
Ireland:
BR identification number is not used in administrative systems in Ireland.
Italy:
The BR ID is used only to identify units in the statistical surveys managed by Istat
Macao:
As explained before, the statistical unit identification number in the ¡°FAE¡±, is only for internal use, and is under responsibilities of our Service.
Mexico:
No.
Netherlands:
Only with the data collection by the National Bank
Portugal:
The identification number for statistical units is the same as for tax purposes.
Spain:
The BR identification number for statistical units is managed by the statistical Agency. It is not used in the administrative files.
USBoC:
The BR contains both the tax agency¡¯s identification number and the Census Bureau¡¯s identification number on most files. The tax agency does not have access to the Census Bureau¡¯s identification number.
1d1. Are the data in the BR used to follow up a unit over time (the issue of continuity)?
1d2. Does the BR include a generally used criterion for continuity?
Explanation: For example, the BR may be used in period on period comparisons to determine which unit is the successor or predecessor of which previous or historical unit.
Australia:
The ABS maintained units are profiled over a regular period and information updated on the statistical units and structure.
Canada:
BR has a time travel capacity. It is possible to track changes in the characteristics of a business (e.g. size, address, ¡) , over time. The BR also has automated, in the form of on-line events, various rules that decide when to maintain frame entity identifiers and when not to maintain them to provide continuity to the survey programs.
For example, in the case of a legal change:
- amalgamation within the same legal family: we keep the statistical ID or one of the predecessor (the unit carrying the name of the amalgamation or the largest revenue)
- amalgamation of two independent legal units: a new statistical ID is issued
- sales of operations: the new unit keeps the ID of the buyer
Denmark:
cf. the answer to 1a.
The continuity rules of the LKAU are built into the updating system of the ABR (and in that way also in the SBR).
For the enterprises the continuity rules are not built into the system. The decisions on enterprise continuity for the statistics on demography are taken outside the SBR system, but the information from the SBR is the main source of information to decide on continuity for enterprises.
Finland:
With the help of BR surveys we try to follow this. We update the link between the successor and the predecessor into the BR database.
France:
The BR includes the managing of different kinds of links between the units. The links between successor local unit(s) and predecessor local unit(s) allow to make a follow-up of the means of production in cases of changes of address, change of owner, mergers or split of.
Germany:
1d1: Germany is going to proceed its test project on business demography. For that purpose we use administrative characteristics to observe units over time.
1d2: The general criterions for continuity for us are the recommendations on the EU manual.
Hong Kong:
Not much work of this sort is being done with the BR in Hong Kong.
Ireland:
1d2 We use the Eurostat continuity rules
Italy:
The continuity criteria are those defined in the Business Demography Project of Eurostat
Macao:
In updating the ¡°FAE¡±, all changes are noted, by writing a remark or by coloring the updated field, and an auxiliary file (the historical data file) is kept within the support system. Through these procedures we can keep track of information and follow up a unit over time, and when necessary, make comparisons to determine conditions for the application of continuity rules.
Mexico:
We follow up the movements obtained through the surveys and we registrate the changes in the BR database.
Netherlands:
Continuity information is used to analyse whether changes in the structure of the business population in the BR influence growth/decline in the figures. Because a part of the BR-updates are corrections in the BR a difference is made between not-real (administrative) and real changes. E.g., statistical units affected by not-real changes in the BR are excluded in the grossing-up procedure for Short-term statistics regarding the period, in which that changes was registered in the BR.
Portugal:
Now it¡¯s available at INE-PT a Module that includes historical information of the statistical unit. This historical information is used to follow up the unit overtime.
Spain:
Data used to follow up a unit over time come from structural surveys. When a tax identification number changes, we ask about the reasons of this change. The BR uses this information to decide the continuity or not of the statistical unit.
USBoC:
Each business location is assigned a permanent identification number that does not change even if the ownership or other characteristics change.
1e1. Is the BR generally used by statisticians as a base for amending data during the processing of administrative files?1e2. Does the BR have a role in the process of transforming administrative data into statistical data?
Explanation: These questions refer to the use of the BR to control the exhaustivity of administrative files (missing units, imputation of missing data) and to standardise into statistical definitions.
Australia: Some 1,500 businesses are contacted each year through profiling activity. This is now the major source of updating of large businesses on the ABS Business Register. In the ABSM population, ABS profilers review and create entity structures based on management reporting and availability of data. The ABS creates a type of activity unit (TAU) which can be managed under an enterprise. Many enterprises can be grouped together. The TAU is comprised of one or more business entities, sub-entities or branches of a business entity that can report productive and employment activities via a set of minimum data items. When defining a TAU, the primary importance is that the activity of the unit be homogeneous. If accounts sufficient to approximate Industry Value Added (IVA) are available at the ANZSIC (Australian & New Zealand Standard Industrial Classification) subdivision level, a TAU will be created.
ATO changes to information of existing ABN units in the ABSM population are monitored and significant changes are investigated by profilers.
Canada:
BR is not used to control the exhaustivity of administrative files in terms of missing units.
BR receives a file of administrative data from CRA on a regular basis. BR compares it with the previous issue to identify new units. It processes administrative data to assign characteristics (NAICS, employment, revenue), and then creates a statistical unit.
Denmark:
An example: Our monthly statistics on turnover.
This statistics is based on information from the VAT-system, and the statistics is worked out rather a short time after the deadline for the businesses to report to the VAT-system. Reports from some units are missing at that time, and for such units turnover is imputed after a check in the SBR that the business unit is still active according to the SBR.
The reporting unit for the VAT-system is a specific administrative unit type. Data for these units are transformed to the enterprise unit type by using the information on links between unit types in the SBR.
Finland:
In Finland most (all!) of the statistical systems make use of BR in their processes (to mention the most important ones: SBS-, STS-statistics, regional employment statistics, population census statistics¡).
France:
For instance, the Activity Code is ascertained by the BR on the basis of administrative data.
There are also other administrative data becoming statistical data when registered in the BR, e.g. : numbers of salaried persons, date of "economic birth", date of "economic death".
Germany:
With the help of the BR short term statistics in the service sector will transform administrative data (like turnover) into statistical data.
Hong Kong:
Two examples may be quoted here. First, the business cancellation records provided by the tax Administration are used to update records in the BR to the ¡°closure¡± status. Second, by grouping establishment records in the BR at business registration level based on the first eight digits of the Business Registration Number (which is used as the BR identification number) assigned by the tax Administration, a central register of businesses could be produced for survey-taking, research, compilation of statistics and other related purposes.
Ireland:
Currently we does use admin data on the BR, turnover for example is not available from the admin systems however we intemd using employer data in 2005.
Italy:
BR is the base of reference for all statistical surveys even those that use as input data taken from administrative files
Macao:
Generally, data from administrative files are used to create a new statistical unit (in accordance with the continuity rules), and to update primary information (identification variables, date of creation, date of cessation, economic activity, etc) of the ¡°FAE¡±.
The ¡°FAE¡± system does not have a role in the process of transforming administrative data into statistical data, nor does it amend data when administrative files are processed. Upon request by users, the ¡°FAE¡± can provide reliable information, in area such as business population, geographical distribution of businesses and furthermore, to control statistics from administrative files.
Mexico:
Our business register isn¡¯t based on administrative files.
Netherlands:
Because the BR contains the links between administrative units and statistical units, the BR has a key role in the process of transformation of administrative data to statistical data.
Portugal:
Till now in Portuguese BR, active legal units are considered equal to enterprises.
Spain:
Exhaustivity controls of administrative files are carried out each time that we update the BR. In these controls we take into account data from the BR and historical data (t-1,t-2,¡) from the same administrative files already used.
The BR assigns the economic activity code and updates with information from structural surveys variables like number of employees, activity code and address.
The role of the BR is processing data from structural surveys about changes of tax identification number to continue, if it is the case, with the statistical unit.
USBoC:
Administrative data are loaded to the BR. The administrative data are transformed into statistical data via direct mail collection of additional information and models for imputing missing data and/or allocating administrative units to statistical units.
1f1. Is the BR generally used by statisticians as a source for making lists of units pertaining
to a given grouping (industry, region, etc.)?
1f2. Is the BR used for obtaining sample frames in business surveys?
1f3. Is there an official procedure for sampling from the BR?
1f4. Are statisticians obliged to use the BR to
obtain their sampling frames for statistical business surveys?
Australia:
The ABS has developed the business register infrastructure to assist survey areas to use a common frame for survey purposes. In the main the majority of ABS surveys are extracted from this common frame hence improving coherence and integration across different economic surveys. There are however, a few activity-based surveys which use independent or supplementary frames to obtain their population list.
Canada:
BR creates a Statistical Universe File (SUF) for each business survey. It is based on the survey population characteristics (e.g. NAICS).
Surveys select their sample from their SUF and return it to BR.
BR creates a Survey Control File (SCF) for the survey to keep track of the units in the SUF which have been sampled in the past and those sampled at the moment.
Surveys maintain contact information in BR.
BR prepares a Statistical Interface File for collection arrangements.
Surveys send BR a file of all records they actually contacted. BR uses this information to keep track of response burden and non response.
Surveys send survey feedback and, when data capture is finished, a file with response codes.
All business surveys are obliged to use BR as their frame except the ¡°commodity based¡± surveys for which BR does not have the necessary data to properly identify their population. However, these surveys are partially hooked up in order to keep track to the response burden they create. There are still a few surveys that are not using the central frame because we didn¡¯t have the time to reconcile the different files. A separate frame is maintained for all agricultural surveys.
Denmark:
The SBR is used as frame for almost all statistics. When I nevertheless but brackets on ¡°obliged to¡± it is because we have some few surveys on specific units where the reporting unit is not the enterprise or the LKAU (or the KAU). That is e.g. the case for some statistics on transportation where the individual lorry is the reporting unit. The sample for this statistics is drawn from a register of vehicles and not from the SBR.
We do not have an official procedure for sampling. From the SBR we provide populations for the statisticians, and from these populations the statisticians themselves select the samples to survey.
Finland:
1f2. This is one of the main purposes of maintaining BR, although for some phenomenon there are also good coverage administrative data, where the sampling is not very important.
1f3. Actually we have an application, a program for sampling, but it is used occasionally, not systematically in all of the sampling events.
1f4. In practice they have no other alternatives.
France:
There is no official procedure for sampling directly from the BR but there is a tool (called OCEAN) closely connected with the BR, which manages sampling and coordinating of samples.Statisticians are not obliged to use the BR to obtain their sampling frames, however in many cases, especially for the most important surveys, they use the BR.
Germany:
No comment.
Hong Kong:
Yes, all these are practices generally adopted as far as official statistical work is concerned.
Ireland:
If3 We are currently designing an official procedure
If4 There is a major IT project ongoing at present, once completed, sections will have to use the BR to obbtain their sampling frame.
Italy:
No comment.
Macao:
The fundamental function of our Business Register is to provide framework for the different statistical surveys conducted by the DSEC, and for the business demographic information. It supplies sample and population data necessary for conducting surveys.
Currently, the ¡°FAE¡± is used as a tool for the preparation and co-ordination of all statistical business surveys conducted by the DSEC. From this statistical Business Register we obtain sample frames, define the population for the surveys, design the sampling schemes and monitor the sample panels, produce business population estimates (the basis for grossing-up results from sample surveys), etc.
It is used also to control survey overlap, help to monitor and spread the response burden on businesses caused by statistical surveys. For specific purposes, a list of enterprises and establishments by location, economic activity, legal form, etc, and cross-tables statistics can be provided.
Within the system of the ¡°FAE¡± we have a computer program for sampling, production of listing and mailing labels. All business surveys conducted by the DSEC rely on this program for sampling purpose.
Mexico:
The official statistic is based on surveys selected from the BR as a survey frame.
Netherlands:
The department, which manages the BR, is responsible for drawing the samples.
Portugal:
There exits a internal information from INE administration that states all business surveys should use BR survey frame, for sampling.
Spain:
The BR is the sample frame for all business economic survey. To draw samples, we use the Permanent Random number technique
USBoC:
No comment.
1g1. Is the BR used in enterprise profiling exercises?
1g2. Is profiling of large enterprises part of the BR updating system?
Explanation: This refers to use of the BR for structural studies on the enterprise system.
Australia:
Some 1,500 businesses are contacted each year through profiling activity. About 375 large businesses (EGs) are personally profiled with the remainder being mail profiled. In the ABSM population, ABS profilers review and create entity structures based on management reporting and availability of data.
The ABS creates a type of activity unit (TAU) which can be managed under an enterprise. Many enterprises can be grouped together. The TAU is comprised of one or more business entities, sub-entities or branches of a business entity that can report productive and employment activities via a set of minimum data items. When defining a TAU, the primary importance is that the activity of the unit be homogeneous. If accounts sufficient to approximate Industry Value Added (IVA) are available at the ANZSIC (Australian & New Zealand Standard Industrial Classification) subdivision level, a TAU will be created.
ATO changes to information of existing ABN units within the ABSM population are monitored and significant changes are investigated by profilers.
Canada:
BR is responsible for profiling.Profiling is done for larger businesses, a threshold being based on revenue, province and industry. The 500 largest businesses are profiled every year. The other are profiled when a signal of change comes from survey feedback or other sources such as articles in newspapers.
Denmark:
As a part of the SBR updating we profile some large and/or complex enterprise groups. For the moment we profile about 60 enterprise groups, and the information obtained during the investigations made for profiling is fed into the SBR.
Finland:
We have a regular, annual survey concerning the largest enterprises (all multi local unit enterprises, largest single ones).
By telephone we continuously (monthly process in BR) contact or ¡®profile¡¯ the largest companies and check, what structural changes have happened, if we get some hint of changes (largest starting companies, mergers (we get monthly a list of mergers from Trade Register).
France:
Some of the BR operators are put in charge of the particular follow-up of the administrative and statistical units belonging to the large enterprise groups.
Germany:
1g1: In the past the BR was used as a basis of drawing samples in order to delineate enterprises in a test survey (compare Peter Schmidt at the 17. Roundtable)
1g2: Only in individual cases.
Hong Kong:
No, profiling of large enterprises is not part of the BR updating system.
Ireland:-
Italy:
We are improving procedure to extend and generalise profiling updating system Macao:In the updating system of the ¡°FAE¡±, large enterprises have the same treatment as other enterprises; their profiling is not a subject matter of particular studies or analyses.
Mexico:
In the BR we can identify all the establishments who remains to the same enterprise but no enterprise groups.
Netherlands:
No comment
Portugal:
You did a profiling exercise, during the 1st quarter of 2004, but we cannot say that profiling is already a systematic process of BR. Updating system.
Spain:
The profiling rules are beginning to be introduced only for the simple cases. We have no experience in the case of large enterprises. However we are developing some tasks to define the internal structure of enterprise groups. It will be the starting point for future activities.
USBoC:
Large enterprises report annually on their locations, number of employees, payroll and their link to administrative identification numbers. This report is used to update the BR.
1h. Are economic demographic analyses compiled directly from BR information?
Explanation: This refers to use of the BR for business demography.
Australia:
Counts of businesses (ABNs) are generated from the BR for external clients. Counts are based on active businesses, both employing and non-employing. The sizing variable is turnover range. No geographic detail is available unless the businesses have a single location, as this information is not held on the BR. Data is confidentialised prior to release.
Canada:
BR disseminates a series of counts of establishments by geographic areas, industry and employment classes. Counts of enterprises are also available on request.BR also publishes counts of payroll deduction accounts by province.Counts of businesses can also be compiled from Tax Data Division and each specific survey area.
Denmark:
CF. the answer to question 1a and 1d1+2
Finland:
Eurostat statistics are compiled in BR.
France:
The follow-up of the enterprises demography is part of the BR managing. It is carried out by means of administrative data, and also with a panel survey named SINE (information system on new enterprises).
Germany:
Please compare our answer at 1d1.
Hong Kong:
In Hong Kong, the tax Administration provides birthing information with name and address only (not even contact details such as telephone number). The statistical Agency is required to conduct survey to collect information on activity code, employment and so on before updating the birth records to the BR. Surely, the time lag in updating the data would have hindered the BR to be a timely source to reflect economic demographic changes.
Ireland:
We do not compile demography analyses.
Italy:
No comment
Macao:
Business demography studies are our future plans. Work will be done to improve the quality and coverage of our statistical Business Register demographic variables, and create conditions to facilitate its uses.
Mexico:
No comment
Netherlands:
Indirect: in combination with sample based register-survey and use of administrative data
Portugal:
The main source to compile Business Demography is the BR. Nevertheless other sources are used:
- Corporation Income Tax;
- Sole proprietorship Income tax
- Structural Business Survey
Spain:
We follow the methodology of Eurostat (Business demography project) to compute real births, deaths and survivals. We only compute number of units and employment.
USBoC:
Tabulations by size and industry are compiled.
2. Feedback
2. the BR used as a co-ordinating database, where a small number of variables,
in use in most operations, are kept up to date using information supplied by users?
Explanation: The aim of maintaining a BR should be to have a common resource used and updated by all users, according to rules applied by the BR operators.
Australia:
Updates to the ABR occur on a regular basis through client contact and feedback. ABR information is provided to the ABS on a monthly basis and this information updated on ABS systems. Significant changes to existing ABSM units are reviewed by profilers and structures changed as required.
The type of feedback information that can be fed back to the ABS BR from survey areas consists of:
- changes to address and contact information;
- employment totals;
- ANZSIC;
- births,deaths and restructures
Feedback is actioned in accordance with Sample Frame Maintenance Procedure (SFMP) rules. Specifically, changes that affect a unit's chance of selection in a survey, e.g. ANZSIC employment and deathing, can only be processed from an independent source. In all cases, only ABS-maintained units can be updated.
The quality of this information is assessed and if found to be of reasonable quality this information is updated for the ABSM units. No information is updated on ATOM units, other than that supplied by the ABR-ATO.
Prior to frame extraction, quarterly audits are undertaken on the ABSM component of the common frame on key stratification variables. Any queries are investigated by profilers and information updated.
Units in the ATOM population are excluded from the common frame if key stratification variables are missing.
Canada:
The mechanisms to provide BR with updates are :
- ¡®802¡¯ form: while capturing data, changes to the information known before capture (name, address, NAICS, inactivity, size, contact) is registered. For small businesses, these changes are applied automatically on BR. For larger businesses, this is used as a signal to check with the business.
- Service Request for Survey Feedback: any change not coming from the ¡®802¡± form can be forwarded to BR by this system. Usually, subject matter analysts would use this process to signal changes from analysing their industry.
- Batch jobs done by BR: for example, to update country of control, to derive revenue from administrative data for non employers.
- CRA updates
- Changes obtained from profiling work either by personal visits, by telephone or by mail
- Removal of potential duplicates: BR compares new small businesses with existing small businesses
- Newspaper clipping
Denmark:
During the statistical process the statistical branches get information that some of the information from the SBR is erroneous. The errors might concern attributes like the address or the activity code or it might be that a unit which is active according to the SBR in reality is closed down.
Such information is given from the statistical branches to the staff of the SBR by e-mail or in other ways, and the corrections in the SBR are made by the SBR-staff. The only exemption from this procedure is regarding the statistics on products within the manufacturing industry. The staffs of this statistics have a special permission to update the activity codes directly in the SBR for the population of business units surveyed in this statistics.
Finland:
BR database is updated only by BR operators and BR personnel. BR personnel, however co-operate with other statisticians and receive their survey data and other corrections as feedback information, but no one outside BR do not autonomously update BR database.
France:
The activity code calculated from the economic data collected through the "annual survey on enterprises" is used to update the activity code in the BR.
The number of salaried persons registered in the BR is updated yearly, using administrative social declarations.
When an enterprise does not answer to the "annual survey on enterprises", a signal is send out to the BR operators, who consider the opportunity of updating the variable "economic state".
The "annual survey on enterprises" is a mail survey. In case of "return to sender", a signal is also sent out to the BR operators, who may update the address.
Germany:
General we obtain feedback information from several statistics. We get data about turnover, number of employees, change of activity status or change of activity code from surveys.
Hong Kong:
For those existing establishments in the BR, they are updated through the following two sources:
(a) Firstly, the tax Administration passes on amendment and deletion records of business registrations to the statistical Agency on a regular basis. The information will be used to update the basic particulars (e.g. name and address amendment) and the operating status (e.g. deleting closure cases) of the establishments in the BR.
(b) Secondly, the establishment surveys conducted by statistical Agency also provide information to update such data fields as type of business, employment size, operating status of establishments in the BR. Among them, the Quarterly Survey of Employment and Vacancies (SEV), which has a much larger sample of 55 000 establishments, is the major vehicle for updating the BR. SEV has been designed with an effect that the updating cycle for all active establishments in the BR is some two years.
Moreover, supplementary information is also obtained regularly from other government administrative records such as lists of schools, taxi licenses and welfare institutions for updating the BR.
Ireland:
We use survey feedback from SBS surveys to update the Register.
Italy:
For the surveyed small-medium units the BR acquires information through batch procedures and rank method
For the surveyed large units information are acquired and checked by skilled staff and updating through on-line procedures
Macao:
Data sources for maintenance of the ¡°FAE¡± are other government departments, specially the Finance Services Bureau, the feedback from quarterly and annually business surveys, direct fieldwork, the administrative documents, the Official Gazette, etc.
Updating process goes through matching, checking and identification, comparisons and qualification, fieldwork verification, normalization, and editing or data processing. Some stages are accomplished automatically, however checking and editing manually are on the way for some variables. In updating process, the survey information prevails over the administrative data.
Usually, fieldwork verification takes place before the updating from administrative sources, for newly created units, in particular items such as the addresses, economic activities, and employment.
Mexico:
At the end of each survey the raising areas, present to the BR a movements report. With this report is updated the BR data base.
Netherlands:
The BR is used as a co-ordinating database for statistical units and characteristics like size class and main activity. Surveys provide feedback, which is handled by BR-staff.
Portugal:
BR is updated with information from business surveys.
There are priority rules according to the sources, defined for the updating process.
Spain:
The BR is only updated once a year with data from administrative files and structural surveys
USBoC:
Users report changes via email, phone or fax to a BR maintenance staff, which does the research and makes updates as needed.
3. Activity code
3a. Which agency is in charge of assigning the activity code to the units initially?
AUS: ABR-ATO
CAN: StatCan-BR
DEN: Tax and Customs Authorities (this summer this task is handed over to The House of Commerce)
FIN: Tax administration
FRA: INSEE-BR
GER: Every administrative agency assigns the code for its own. Official statistics define the activity code if necessary or being updated
HKG: Census & Statistics Department
ITA: Chamber of Commerce
MAC: Finance Services Bureau of the Government of Macao SAR
MEX: INEGINLD: Chamber of Commerce
POR: Ministry of Justice for companies; Ministry of Finance for Sole Proprietors
SPN: Tax Agency
USBoC: Administrative Agencies (IRS ¨C Tax Agency, Social Security Administration), Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the Census Bureau all assign activity codes to units
3b. Is the activity code of a statistical unit kept fixed during a month, quarter or year in the BR?
3c. If it appears, from a survey information, that the BR activity code is wrong, is the code changed
in the processing of the survey results or will the wrong code be kept in these results?
Explanation: The co-ordination of results (statistical output) of different surveys may conflict with the independent processings of statistical output of the surveys.
Australia: The ABR-ATO undertakes the initial activity coding of the ABN unit. This activity code may change as a two stage coding process is undertaken for employing units with clerical activity coding taking place on the initial code. The quality of activity coding of birthed units is monitored by ABS on a monthly basis.
ABS profilers undertake activity coding of the TAU unit and are responsible for ensuring the enterprise structures are correctly represented on the business register.
Survey areas mainly select units at the TAU level for ABSM units and ABNs for ATOM units. On investigation survey areas could determine the activity code for a unit to be incorrect. This information is changed locally and if the unit is an ABSM unit, the survey area will notify the BR at the end of the survey cycle.
The SFMP rules include procedures for dependent source feedback where the frame activity code is kept for survey design but may be changed for estimation purposes.
Canada:
Updates to the activity code can be done anytime. The updates are applied with a processing and effective date. Individual survey programs decide from the respective Survey Universe files when and how to introduce the industry update into the independent processing of statistical output of the surveys.
Denmark:
In the SBR the activity code is changed when we get information on erroneous codes or on change of activity. Our SBR contains historicism which means that the updating in the register is dated so that one can see in the register from when the updating of the activity code had effect in the real world.By means of this we can draw a population with information referring to a day in the past, e.g. we can today draw a population of units active at the end of 2003 and with the activity codes which were in force at that point of time. These extracts are made when requested from the statistical branches. We have not laid down a day to draw a fixed version of SBR for the year 2003 to use for all statistics concerning 2003. This means that corrections made between two orders of a version of the SBR may cause differences for the information e.g. on activity code for a given business unit.
We are aware of the problem of lack of coherence between the statistics this procedure might cause. Until now we have not been able to carry through a strategy of using fixed versions of SBR for all statistics and then if necessary to publish revised statistics if errors on activity codes in this fixed version of the SBR are detected and adjusted.
When it appears from survey information that the SBR activity code for one of the units is wrong, it is our normal procedure that this activity code is changed both in the statistics and in the SBR.
Finland:
3b. The date of change is stored into BR. One can use this information if needed.
3c. They may conflict. Usually BR receives the feedback information and makes corrections immediately after that.
France:
The activity code is not kept fixed in the BR, however the past history of the series of values is stocked in the BR. In the sample procedures, it may be fixed for a year.
There is only one survey, the "annual survey on enterprises", from whose information the activity code may be changed in the BR. As for the code retained for the survey results, it is the choice of the statisticians managing the survey, whatever happens with the BR.
Germany:
No comment.
Hong Kong:
Though the tax Administration may in some cases provide a brief description of the activity nature (as reported by applicants when applying for business registration) of an administrative unit, effectively it is the statistical Agency in charge of assigning the activity code right from the start. The statistical Agency would collect more information on the economic activity of the establishments (e.g. the operating status, detailed industry being engaged in and employment size) to facilitate the coding.Information from various surveys, if different from that in the BR, would be checked (with particular regard to the economic activity coding concept) before being updated to the BR. The updating time and source would be kept in the BR for future reference.
Ireland:-
Italy:
A frozen BR file is produced yearly. It is the frame of reference for all surveys and the economic activity code is fixed for the year (even if it is wrong)
However data are currently corrected and updated in the BR Data Base but the new code will be disseminated in the frozen file which will be produced in the next year
Macao:
In fact, the activity code of the statistical unit in ¡°FAE¡± is kept fixed until the information available gives a strong reason for changes (matter of updating system), we do not have fixed time period for re-evaluation of this item.
Generally, main variables of the ¡®¡¯FAE¡¯¡¯ are updated before conducting the business surveys. However, survey information prevail over the FAE information ; all statistical output are made according to visiting results. In the case of sample surveys, the population distribution is adjusted after survey results.
Mexico:
We are coordinated about this, because the managers of the BR and the survey design belong to the same area.
Netherlands:
The BR is used as a co-ordinating database for statistical units and characteristics like size class and main activity. Surveys provide feedback, which is handled by BR-staff.
Portugal:
There are rules for the updating process related with the activity code of a statistical unit. To Kept or not Kept the activity code is mainly related with the source that had updated the activity code before.
Spain:
The BR is updated with structural surveys. This information has priority against administrative data.
USBoC:
Changes are made in the different surveys independently. Routine updates are loaded and rules determine the ¡°best¡± code if they differ.Non-routine updates are referred to the BR maintenance unit who reconciles any conflicting codes.
4. Weak areas
4a. Currently, what are the weak areas and do you plan changes to overcome the difficulties?
Australia:
Quality of industry coding of Non employing (NEU) activity description information. ABS is assisting ABR-ATO with the development of activity based autocoders to assist in ABR-ATO coding of new registrants. A new industry classification is being implemented in 2006 and plans are in place to smoothen this transition.
Quality of data items feeding into ABS BR derivation programs eg quality of not for profit flag, government control indicator, type of business entity. ABS is investigating the quality of these data items.
Quality of the information held against the stock population. An evaluation of the quality of industry coding of the stock was recently carried out. With the proposed change in the ANZSIC industry classification in 2006 a refresh of these codes will take place. Updates to business turnover and salary and wages are available through quarterly or annual GST returns.
Consistency in application of profiling rules. Ongoing training is provided to ensure profilers maintain and update their knowledge of business processes.
Problems with linking ABNs to TAU units in the ABSMP create difficulties when trying to substitute tax data for directly collected data.
Flexibility of BR system to accommodate other selection or statistical units apart from those described above - ie not based on ABN.
Loss of small area geographic detail for multi location units.
Canada:
Here are the major challenges facing our statistical register:
The dynamics of the business world
The business world is rapidly changing. In a context of globalization, an increasing number of businesses are changing both their operational and their legal structure in order to reduce their operating expenses and maximize their profits. This leads to the formation of complex, multinational corporate families that pose a challenge for measuring national economic activity. These major changes in the business world are causing us to rethink the conceptual framework of the BR, notably as regards the definition of statistical entities¡ªenterprise, company, establishment and location¡ªas well as the necessary links between legal, operational and statistical entities.
The Register¡¯s technological environment
The BR¡¯s computer system is based on a complex architecture that relies heavily on the mainframe and on obsolete software that are no longer used by the other divisions of Statistics Canada. Thus the technological environment is highly vulnerable, and it poses a major challenge in the coming years.
Rules for updating the units of the Register and operational processes
Over the years, the BR¡¯s operating procedures have been changed several times in response to specific events. These include the implementation of the Business Number, the integration of various sources of fiscal data into Register maintenance activities, and the modernization efforts of recent years, intended to make the Register more efficient, accessible and useful. However, these changes have been made on an ad hoc basis, with no relation to each other. As a result, the different modules of the Register do not form as consistent and efficient a whole as they would if they had been developed within the framework of an architecturally integrated strategic plan. A detailed review of the processes is desirable before considering other changes that will be required in response to emerging system pressures.
Business Register review process
In light of the above-mentioned factors, we have undertaken a review of the BR program and articulate a vision to ensure that it is viable and relevant in the coming years. A strategic plan will be tabled to be reviewed by senior managers in early 2005
Denmark:
The continuity rules for LKAUs are built into the BR-system. For a period there was some inappropriateness in these rules. These inappropriateness have now been corrected but some ¡°false¡± decisions are still existing in the system (Too many new units and with that closed units which really should have been changes to existing units).
We are now in a process of correcting errors made on continuity. The correcting is done both automatic (by programming) and manually.
But even if corrections have been made to the system, it is impossible to build an automatic system which can make correct decisions in all cases for such a complicated matter. We therefore want to direct more resources to the manual check of current continuity-decisions made by the system.
Another very important issue is the quality of the activity codes of the SBR. Within the latest year we have made an investigation on the quality of the activity codes attached to the business units in the SBR. The quality was not showy, and we try to obtain resources to conduct targeted surveys to improve the quality of the activity codes.
Finland:
Weak area: some conflict (in unit delineation, variables, rules,etc) between statistical systems like national account statistics, SBS, STS,¡
Aim and plan: More coordination, more common rules, more exchange of know how¡, more systematic use of feedback information from other statistical surveys.
At the moment there are working 2 project groups in Statistics Finland for the above aims: one is ¡®developing common rules how to handle the largest (and multinational) enterprises¡¯, the other is working for ¡®common operational determinations and rules between national accounts and basic statistics¡¯.
We (BR) participate this work and look forward to the results of these projects.
France:
- the associations : the registration system must be improved, especially with the help of the development of the electronic administration"
- agriculture sector : too many farms registered ; the identification of the units must be improved, as well as the counting of the salaried persons in this sector.
- geographical localisation of the salaried persons in the public sectorGermany:Weak areas are units in the NACE-Sections A, B and L.
Hong Kong:
- Residing on multiple computer platforms which cause longer turnaround time
- Without on-line function for record creation
- Without respondent burden control / sampling history function
- Lacking Chinese processing ability
Ireland:-
Italy:
The main weak area is the timeless of the information disseminated to users. Our plan is to reduce the lag between the reference and dissemination time from 18 months (now) to 12 months (in 2006) above all through the time reduction in acquisition of fiscal data ¨C fiscal turnover is a fundamental variable to determine the status of activity of an enterprise. In 2005 is foreseen a reduction of the lag at 15 months.
Macao:
Currently, the main concern of the ¡°FAE¡± is the updating system, particularly when referring to newly created enterprises. The administrative file from the Finance Services Bureau is very incomplete and many stratification variables are not available. For that reason, it is time consuming during updating process, which includes fieldwork verification for all unmatched administrative units. To overcome this problem we are looking for better co-operate with the Finance Services Bureau.
Mexico:
No comment
Netherlands:
- Agriculture and free occupations without employees: solved with the introduction of a sinlge business register
- Some groups with a high failure rate in assigning the main activity code: now discussion on a proposal to let Statistics Netherlands responsible for coding main activities in public register
Portugal:
The weak areas are related with the access to tax files, due to legislation constraints. INE-PT is now working together with Ministry of Finance in a Protocol to exchange Tax data between the two entities.
Spain:
The incorporation of the A, B sections will permit to define better the activity code of enterprises. But the problems of activity code allocation will increase. Specially for those units that belong to BR and are investigated by structural surveys or short term surveys.
To overcome these problems we continue to carry out a survey to improve the activity code in the BR and to update information with structural surveys. So, the coordination between samples of different survey will permit us to solve this problem.
USBoC:
Improve the quality assurance procedures.
Develop better coordination and data sharing with users.
Develop better interactive software for users.
4b. What are the unsolved problems, now or in the foreseeable future?
Australia:
The currency of the information on the ABR as we are dependent on the ABR-ATO for updating the vast majority of the information on the Register.
Lack of flexibility in BRU systems and the Units Model to accommodate new collections.
Canada:
Denmark:
The Statistical Business Register (SBR) is built up in the way that the Administrative Business Register (ABR) is an integrated part of SBR. This brings many advantages but it has also some drawbacks.
One of the drawbacks is that there are different views on how the business units of the register shall be defined.
In particular the definition of the local legal kind of activity unit and the continuity rules for this unit type is important for Statistics Denmark. Now this unit type is defined as we want it to be, i.e. corresponding to the LKAU, and the continuity rules for this unit type is laid down by Statistics Denmark. But some opposition to this has begun to come to light. For administrative purposes the continuity rules now applied are rather inconvenient and very difficult to handle and rumblings on possible changes of this has started. If that happen it will be a very big problem for Statistics Denmark. It will probably cause that we will have to loosen the very tight connection to ABR, and build the continuity rules into our own SBR system, i.e. to build more or less a new SBR system.
Regarding the attributes to the business units, e.g. the activity code, the integration between ABR and SBR is both an advantage and a drawback.
It is an advantage that as the data are used very much, the companies themselves or others may apply for an updating rather frequently.
But at the same time the administrative use of the data means that it is more convenient (cheaper) for a company to have one activity code than to have another. When the data are used for administrative purposed the value of an attribute might have financial implications for the companies, e.g. if the insurance premium for a company depends on the activity code. One can therefore imagine that many of the applications for changes of e.g. activity code may cause imbalance.
Finland:
Legal unit = enterprise, still unsolved on the operational level.
France:
- to follow up the continuity in the agriculture sector
- to keep up to date the activity code for the small firms and for the local units (the "annual survey on enterprises", which is used to do it, do not investigate exhaustively)
- to keep up to date the activity code and the activity status for the enterprises without salaried persons (so that the BR includes "falsely active enterprises")
Germany:
In the current BR of Germany (BR 95) there is a basis for meta data missing. For example, the program of this BR doesn¡¯t allow to save the timecode and the source for every characteristic. It is also not possible to implement new types of units. Basing on the BR 95 we are about to create a new register system called the ¡°BR New¡± with extended functionality and a new model of units.
Hong Kong:
- Lacking hierarchal relationship among establishments
- Lacking information on activity code, employment and so on from the tax Administration; thus requiring the statistical Agency to conduct a separate survey, which is costly and time-consuming, to collect such information before updating the birth records to the BR
Ireland:
As 4a.
Italy:
With reference to the use of BR for co-ordinating samples, at the moment the procedures work only for Structural Surveys. The extension of the co-ordination to Short term surveys is under discussion, but this is an issue belonging to the main problem of the coherence between STS and SBS.
Macao:
Time lags relating to births and deaths of enterprises are a major problem. Actually, every month the Finance Services Bureau uploads database files for updating process, but due to time consumed in fieldwork verification only three or more months later the updatng is finished. This seriously affects the coverage of surveys, and other uses of the FAE.
Another problem is the concept of business operating status for enterprises, caused by dormant legal units and lack of information to confirm or make judgement about the status.
Mexico:
We don¡¯t have access to administrative files.
Netherlands:
A real event-driven approach. Problems are: what is an event? Wenn an event is considered as a classification of differencese between two point in time: how long should the period be? How to collect all relevant information on events?
Portugal:
Identification of the statistical unit ¡®complex enterprise¡¯.
Spain:
How to process and coordinate information that it comes from economic surveys about the events detected during the fieldwork (activity status) with the one from administrative files.
USBoC:
Ability to accommodate different definitions of statistical units in different surveys.
5. Critical issues
5. What are the three most critical issues in the BR in fulfilling the co-ordinating role in economic statistics?
Australia:
1. Applying the units model to all economic collections. The ABS has adopted a fairly simple units model. This has created some difficulties for collections, which, for example, require data at a more detailed level such as the local/establishment unit.
2. Ensuring the quality of key variables on the business register. The ABS relies on the ABR-ATO to maintain the majority of units on the BR. ATO business drivers are not the same as ABS business drivers which can sometimes lead to differing priorities for quality improvements.
3. Maintaining the currency of business register information.
Canada:
1. The Register must be updated on an ongoing basis to ensure the quality and appropriateness of the information that it contains, which is essential for designing and implementing effective surveys.
2. To keep the Register relevant, it is necessary to monitor constantly changing circumstances in the following areas: the business sector, applications of accounting practices, information technology, survey methodology, and data collection methods.
3. Any change in the main components of the Register must be implemented with great caution, since the repercussions may affect many surveys, some of them adversely. For example, changes in the updating procedures for annual surveys may have a negative impact on sub-annual surveys and thus create artificial breaks in statistical series.
Denmark:
1. The SBR shall without omissions and without double-counting cover all businesses, and the data contained in the SBR must be unambiguous. I.e. there shall be no room for different interpretations among different statisticians of what are the proper population and the proper attributes to the population for the statistics. The quality of the attributes to the units of the SBR must be so good that no serious corrections occur during the statistical process. If serious corrections occur it must be communicated to the users to allow revisions of already published statistics.
2. If the coordination between the economic statistics shall be complete it is necessary to determine that the same fixed version of the SBR shall be used as population and background information for all statistics concerning the same period.
3. It might not be appropriate to use the same fixed version of the SBR for both short-term statistics and for structural statistics. Instead it could be convenient to allow corrections until the first structural statistics for a given year is worked out and at that time fix the SBR-version for all structural statistics.
Finland:
1. Identification system and its wide use. This is in good (even perfect) condition in Finland.
2. Delineation of units. In majority of cases this issue is in good condition in Finland. Some problematic cases exists. Enterprises are divided to local units until very detailed level in BR. This means: on the level of single addresses. This is needed for example in population census statistics ¨C because their statistical products are published very detailed, small area level. For SBS it is sometimes impossible to collect data on this level. For them the smallest administrative area is enough. So they sometimes form their own local unit delineation (which is more rough).
3. Ability to use and understand BR system: its concepts and practices. In order to increase the understanding of BR we have produced better documentation. We have prepared descriptions of BR variables and processes. This material is stored now in the intranet of Statistics Finland and it is available for everyone in Statistics Finland. So it forms like a handbook of BR. And we hope that we could get active feedback from other statistical systems, so that we could develop our service ability.
France:
1. The statisticians disagree about the register which is to be used as the benchmark one for the statistical analyses (the BR or an other register ?)
2. The basically administrative nature of the BR upset the statisticians.
3. There is no enterprise group register managed by the BR.
Germany:
1. The decentralised organisation of the German BR and the necessity of individual data exchange between single federal states and between the Federal Statistical Office and the Statistical Offices of the federal states is a critical issue.
2. Integration of feedback information into the BR has to be standardised.
3. The BR not always supply all the specific wants of all economical statistics (like timeliness).
Hong Kong:
1. Being inadequate to serve as a knowledge management tool: The economic structure and business environment in Hong Kong have been changing rapidly in recent years. To keep abreast with the economic development and changes, there are more new requirements such as to revise the classification coding for economic activities, to capture establishments of paper companies which have business transactions but no employment and to link up parent and branch establishments. Large scale enhancements to cope with these requirements are not feasible under the existing system design of the BR. Besides, the BR may also be enhanced to capture such information as the respondent/contact details, accounting period and other field intelligence so that it can serve as a knowledge warehouse about the individual sampling units, thus facilitating customer (i.e. survey respondent) relationship management.
2. Lack of respondent burden indicator: The number of establishment surveys undertaken has ever been growing as more and more statistics are required for planning and policy-making purposes to cope with the fast changing economy. Form-filling gradually constitutes a heavy burden to the respondents, especially to those large-sized establishments which are sampled by most establishment surveys. As increased respondent burden may generally result in lower response rates and lower quality of data obtained, thus affecting adversely the survey results, it is desirable to spread the reporting burden evenly. The process of updating survey feedbacks to the BR, to be discussed and agreed among survey users, could be re-engineered along this direction.
3. Lack of organizational structure with level higher than establishment: Many economic surveys have to construct their own frame of higher level structure, some at kind-of-activity level and some at enterprise level. This is done through frame restructuring processes by obtaining the establishment records from the BR but different surveys have different frame restructuring processes due to various reasons. The restructured information may be pooled centrally into the BR. The centralised information could then be shared among all survey users with a view to unifying the frame restructuring processes or at least serving as the building block for other surveys to re-structure the frame.
Ireland:1. 2. 3.
Italy:
1. While Structural Business Statistics are completely integrated and coherent with the BR data structure, some Short Term Statistics (especially the monthly survey on employment of large enterprises and the monthly survey on producers¡¯ prices) are not co-ordinated.
2. The application of the definition of the enterprise as ¡°minimum set of legal units¡± is still running. The main problem will be to let SBS (and STS) accept the introduction of this big change.
3. None
Macao:
1. The support System of the BR. In fulfilling the coordinating role in economic statistics, the BR is accomplishing its functions as a tool for preparation and coordination of business surveys and as a source of information for statistical analysis of the business and its demography. For this purpose, the BR needs a good software application to support its maintenance system, assisting an efficient mobilization of administrative sources, the detection and construction of statistical units, and the contribution to effective coordination of several business surveys. Without a good support system, it is very difficult to achieve the required quality (relevance, accuracy, timeliness, coherence, completeness, etc.) for the BR.
2. The contents and coverage of the BR. As a framework for business surveys and statistical analysis of the business and its demography, the BR needs to identify and characterize business units accurately. This work depends on how complete and how updated are the contents of the BR.
3. The authority of the BR. To be the coordinating infrastructure of the economic statistics, the BR should be the survey frame for all business surveys within the national/local statistical system, and be recognized as the authoritative source for data on business populations and demography. Work should be done to mobilize potential users to understand the importance of the BR in the efficiency of the national statistical system. For that, the users should be provided with high quality BR outputs.
Mexico:
1. We don¡¯t have agreements to share information with administrative agencies.
2. here is not a unique identification number for economic units.
3. The e.u. don¡¯t take care of the law, and there aren¡¯t mechanisms to force them, to give annual information to INEGI about their movements.
Netherlands:
1. Support of the top management for the coordinating role of the BR. In relationship with this: users incline to correct for frame errors in their own (not coordinated) environment
2. A BR should reflect the real economic development; in practise the BR is oft confronted with administrative events, sometimes due to external causes sometimes due to internal reasons, e.g. changes in updating rules or re-engineering projects
3. Quality of staff: profiling, analyses of mutations processed in the BR and client oriented attitude of staff
Portugal:
1. Access to administrative tax files.
2. Statistical burden: It¡¯s necessary to develop a tool linked to BR to control statistical burden.
3. Nothing indicated.
Spain:
1. To link legal unit with statistical unit
2. To coordinate structural surveys with short term business surveys
3. The quality of data input: administrative files
USBoC:
1. To maintain an accurate, timely, and comprehensive frame.
2. Meeting the requirements of many users including making the files, software, and systems accommodate many uses at the same time.
3. To be flexible enough to accommodate changing requirements in regard to identifying business organizations.
6. Place of the BR in a model of coherent economic statistics
6a. Is there now, or are you moving towards, a coherent organisation of business economic statistics in your country?
6b. If yes, provide the main outline of the present or target system, with the indication of (i) the sources
(administrative files, surveys, etc.) and how they are combined, and (ii) the common infrastructure and tools.
Australia:
The BR is maintained mainly from administrative sources from the ABR-ATO. For larger, more complex enterprises, a range of other sources, predominantly profiling, are used for maintenance purposes. Each quarter, a Common Frame is extracted from the BR which is used by the majority of economic collections as a source for their survey frames.
Currently, the BR, Common Frame and survey data files are maintained on separate systems. The ABS is currently moving towards integrating these into a single platform, the Input Data Warehouse. The extent to which full integration can occur is still being investigated.
Canada:
We already have what we believe to be a coherent organisation of business economic statistics.
Functions such as frame update and maintenance, collection tools development, data collection activities and many post-collection processes are all performed in an integrated manner.
Many common tools are used to perform survey activities and data analysis. The establishment of the Unified Enterprise Survey (over 50 annual business surveys operationally integrated and using common tools and methodologies) is a very good example.
Denmark:
The organisation of the business statistics in Statistics Denmark is so that the short term statistics is organised in different divisions while the structural business statistics is organised in one division which also is responsible for the SBR.
We have three main structural business statistics, on turnover, on employment and on accounts.These statistics are based on different sources but all of them with a basis in the SBR.
The statistics on employment is made up for LKAUs while the other two statistics are made up for enterprises.
The three statistics are combined in a statistics on enterprises by using the information in the SBR on relations between the different unit types.
In this combination of the statistics we have faced numerous problems because of not using the same fixed version of the SBR and we therefore plans to introduce the use of fixed versions of the SBR for these statistics.
Finland: -
France:
Our organisation, named OREADE (Tools and Registers for the Study, the Analysis and the Demography of Enterprises) revolves around three main issues : to reduce statistical burden for the firms, by the use of current information (administrative sources) ; to improve the quality, by taking account of the needs of all the users ; to meet the needs of the regional and local users.For that, the BR (SIRENE) is the central point of the system ; OREADE operates the coordination of the system and allows the communications.
Several types of sources :
- administrative sources (from administrative or juridical files, from the tax authorities, from the social administrations)
- surveys (especially the "annual survey on enterprises", whose sampling is managed by a tool very closely connected to the BR, and the "financial links" survey)One can mention, for example,
- DADS : administrative data about employment and salaries, obtained from social declarations- SUSE : fiscal data, obtained from administrative declarations
- RI : economic data, obtained from quarterly turnover declarations
- EPURE : data about income levels and numbers of salaried persons, obtained from declarations at the social services
- LIFI : financial links between units (obtained from a survey)
- CITRUS : information about restructuring of the units (obtained from administrative files and surveys)
Germany:
The discussion on reforming business statistics has just begun. At present we are not able to give you more information about this topic.
Hong Kong:
No comment
Ireland:
A project has just commenced called SPAR (Statistical Potential of Administrative Records) where the data holdings for businesses across the Public Service is being examined.
Italy:
- the sources: Chamber of Commerce data, VAT data, Revenue Data, Social Security data, Official Balance Sheet data, SBS and STS data, BR data. The data are combined using Fiscal Code (for the integration of adm. Data) and Business Register Code (Statistical code)
- the infrastructure is based on three Data Base (in Oracle) described in the following schema
Macao:
At this moment it is difficult to comment on that question, because this matter was not discussed in our Service yet. We¡¯ll exchange the experience with you at the meeting.
Mexico:
The BR is based on economic census which are made each five years. In the intercensal period the BR database is updated with the information provided for the surveys and with information provided for the statistical manifestation which compel e.u. to give information INEGI; currently we are working in a project for obtain the administrative records from the counties agencies.
Netherlands:
Main outlines;
- a few standard production lines for statistics
- the BR is the only base for units
- grossing up on the basis of coordinated population figures
- priority: use of administrative data completed by direct surveys
Portugal:
No comment.
Spain:
We have integrated and coordinated business economic statistics. To draw different samples, we apply positive and negative coordination using The Permanent random number technique. We also collect data from several surveys in a coordinated way.
USBoC:
There is very limited move towards a coherent organization of business economic statistics in the USA. Recent legislature allows limited sharing of data among the three largest statistical agencies, the Census Bureau, Bureau of Economic Analysis, and Bureau of Labor Statistics. The Bureau of Labor Statistics and Census Bureau currently maintain independent business registers with only limited sharing of some industry codes. However, this data sharing is still greatly limited by laws restricting sharing of the administrative data.
6c. Provide also a description of the specific role of the BR in this system and its internal and external relationships.
Australia:
The BR maintains strong links with the ABR-ATO which is the revenue agency from which administrative records are obtained.The BR also maintains close links with the (separate) Common Frame Unit and individual survey areas within the ABS.
Canada:
The BR is an inventory of all businesses operating in Canada. The Register plays a vital role in implementing the mandate of Statistics Canada. It is an essential component in the running of economic surveys at Statistics Canada. It supports activities, mainly for establishing a survey frame, sampling, collecting and processing data, and producing estimates. It is estimated that more than 1,500 employees throughout Statistics Canada use the Register in carrying out their daily activities.
Denmark:
1. SBR contains all the information in the ABR, i.e. ABR is a subset of the SBR
2. SBR is used as frame for almost all our surveys on business units, and the populations to be used for the surveys are provided to the statisticians by the SBR staff
3. From these populations the statisticians themselves draw the samples
4. When errors in the SBR data are detected during the statistical process the errors are reported to the SBR staffs who correct the data in the SBR. At the same time the errors are corrected by the statisticians in their own files.
5. For statistics based on administrative files data on activity code and address etc. from the SBR is used as background information.
6. Also for statistics based on administrative files errors in the SBR data are detected during the statistical process. Errors are reported to the SBR staffs who correct the data in the SBR. In some cases the statisticians correct themselves, and in other cases they order a new extract from the SBR with the corrected data for their statistics.
Finland:
BR stores basic business population and identification system. BR stores limited data content, which covers primarily classifications, demographic variables, etc¡, but has good coverage of data for each variable.
BR collects and links a lot of administrative (and even private mass data) and also BR own survey data available for other statistical systems. BR is source of units, source of classifications and source of some other data for other statistical systems.
BR co-operates with some other statistical systems: example; surveys the multi local unit enterprises jointly with regional employment statistics, uses some feedback information¡
BR produces some statistics of business populations.
France:
In the centre of the system, the BR mobilizes the data coming from the different sources, to manage different sets of units (legal units, local units, enterprises, and groups), characterized by different types of variables (identification, classification, continuity), aimed for different uses (administration, statistics, commercial diffusion).
Germany:
No comment.
Hong Kong:
No comment.
Ireland:
Project has just started so no role for the BR at this stage.
Italy:
BR supplies the unique statistical identification code for the enterprise; this code is used to contact enterprises in all statistical surveys.
BR yearly supplies the structure of the enterprises operating in the national territory. The structure is in terms of Economic Activity, Size (persons employed, employees, self employment), Location, Legal status.
Macao:
See the comments for 6a and 6b.
Mexico:
The BR is used as a statistical frame for all samples of economic official surveys.
Netherlands:
Internal relationships:
- coordinated population frame
- coordination of surveys and samples
- level (statistical units) on which administrative data are presentedExternal relationships:
- linkage with administrative registers/units
Portugal:
Spain:
The BR is the sample frame. It is updating with data from administrative files (tax files) and structural surveys. The tax identification number is used to link all the registers.
Between other data, it contains information about burden statistical of the enterprises since 1996: number of different surveys where they have participated, grade of collaboration (response, non-response, no contact). This information is used to coordinate samples between surveys.
USBoC:
Currently the Census Bureau¡¯s BR contains the sampling frame for most Census business surveys. It also contains all administrative data for use in business surveys. Due to legal restrictions there are few external relationships. Some other US Federal agencies do contract with Census to conduct surveys for them.
In this annex to the main paper the drawings regarding the place and role of the Statistical business registers in the system of economic statistics are presented as received from the responding agencies.
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