Call for Paper Announcement for Session 4

Call for papers - Session on Classification Issues

18^th Roundtable on Business Survey Frames

Beijing, China October 17-22, 2004

Established in 1986, the Roundtable on Business Survey Frames is an informal body which is part of the United Nations “City Groups’. Its purpose is to provide a forum where officials from national and international statistical organisations can exchange views and experiences on topics related to the development, maintenance and use of sampling frames for business surveys.

The 17^th annual meeting of the Roundtable took place in Rome in October 2003. A total of 23 national and international statistical organizations attended the meeting. A number of topics were discussed, including business register profile issues; globalization and the proposed multinational enterprises (MNE) project; business register quality indicators; improving business register coverage; and business demography.

The 18^th annual meeting of the Roundtable will be held in Beijing in October 2004 and will be hosted by the National Bureau of Statistics of China. The programme includes eight sessions covering a wide range of topics, such as role of business register system for co-ordination of economic statistics; administrative and statistical units; globalization, including progress on the MNE project; and technological tools and techniques for improving the business register. More information about the 18^th Roundtable is available at the website: www.stats.gov.cn/english/18roundtable/.

Call for papers: Session on Classification Issues

One of the eight sessions at the 18^th Roundtable meeting will focus on « classification issues ».

In 2007, ISIC (the International Standard Industrial Classification) rev 4 will be published by the United Nations. Based on the current consultation draft, there will be many changes between this new version of the international industry classification and the current ISIC rev 3.1. The implementation of ISIC rev 4 will be a difficult challenge for business registers. The session on classification issues will therefore focus on best practices, techniques and tools for converting business registers from one version of an industry classification to a significant revised version or to a different classification (e.g. the change form SIC to NAICS in Canada, Mexico and the USA). 

Papers are invited on the content of the 2007 revision of ISIC, past experiences with such conversions and tools and techniques such as automated conversions, classification surveys and the use of standardized activity descriptors as the basis for classification and conversion. Each paper will be the subject of a presentation (30‑45 minutes) by the author organization. The session on Classifications Issues is expected to include three or four presentations. 

If you are interested to contribute a paper, please provide a short abstract (about 100 words) to the session convenor and to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) of China.

　　- Convenor for session on Classification Issues: François Maranda

                     Director General, Classification Systems Branch

                     Statistics Canada

                     Email: maranda@statcan.ca

                     Tel: 613-951-7081  Fax: 613-951-0411

- National Bureau of Statistics of China:
                 Email: 18roundtable@stats.gov.cn   
                 Fax 0086-10-68576354

The overall timetable is as follows:

-  Abstracts have to be sent to Convenor and NBS: 20^th July, 2004

-  Final selection of papers for the session on Classification Issues: 31^th July, 2004

-  Deadline for papers to be submitted: 9^th September, 2004

-  Final agenda for the meeting: 29^th September, 2004

Thank you.