Australian Bureau of Statistics
Celebrating the International Year of Statistics 2013

NAME OF ORGANISATION
Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS)

OVERVIEW
The Integrated Business Characteristics Strategy (ICS) is the strategy for bringing together the collection of business characteristics statistics. There are two types of outputs - macro and micro. The Business Characteristics Survey (BCS) is the survey instrument for the IBCS. Macro outputs are the population or cross-sectional estimates and include general business characteristics, Business Use of Information Technology (BUIT) and Innovation; these are collectively referred to as Business Characteristics. The micro output is the Business Longitudinal Database (BLD) in the form of a Confidentialised Unit Record File (CURF); this will include business characteristics (unit record data collected as part of the BCS); financial data from principally administrative sources.

The first Business Characteristics Survey was conducted in 2004-05; this survey collected business characteristics data required for the Business Longitudinal Database (BLD) only. The 2005-06 was the first integrated survey and combined the collection of general business characteristics required for the Business Longitudinal Database (BLD) with the collection of items previously collected in the Business Use of Information Technology Survey and some summary indicators previously collected in the Survey of Innovation in Australian Business. The 2006-07 survey will collect general business characteristics more and more detailed Innovation data.

The design variables for the BCS population outputs are the proportion of businesses undertaking Internet commerce (placing and/or receiving orders) and proportion of innovators. The target Standard Errors for the design variables are specified at the total Australian level and are comparable to that achieved for BUIT and approximately double that achieved for Innovation in the past. The targets then vary based on industry and employment size; they are broadly comparable to the quality achieved in previous surveys. The target overall sample size for 2006-07 is approximately 14,500 selections, which includes top-up required as part of the change to ANZSIC06. Of the total overall sample, approximately 9,000 selections contribute to BCS population estimates and 9,000 form part of the 3 BLD panels (this means that around 5,000 selections are common to both the BLD and the population estimates). Careful consideration is being given to all aspects of sample design, particularly those which could result in more efficiencies and reduced provider load.

The core IT and business characteristics content has remain relatively unchanged for 2006-07. The detailed IT content included for 2005-06 has been removed and is being replaced with detailed innovation content. In general, innovation content is more onerous and conceptually complex than IT content. Core business characteristics content includes the activity of the business, the number of locations, whether the business is home based; employment including casuals, full/part time, turnover and pay arrangements; age of business; foreign ownership; trade status; franchising and other co-operative arrangements; measures used to assess business performance; debt and equity finance; markets and competition; and, core annual indicators of innovation and IT use.

The benefits of the new Integrated Business Characteristics Strategy include:
• A more coherent and consistent set of business characteristic statistics covering a range of variables for the whole economy. The enhanced usefulness of business characteristics data will be possible through the integration of data collection as more data will be relatable.
• Users will have greater ability to undertake cross-cutting research on the effects of various business practices on firm performance. This is the most significant benefit from the integration proposal.
• Improved data quality through alignment of concepts, increased data confrontation, improved survey design and estimation methodologies, and consistent survey processes;
• Flexibility of the collection vehicle to adapt to changing needs;
• Reduced overall provider load due to two instead of three survey iterations every two years. In addition, the reuse of longitudinal data to contribute to cross-sectional estimates may result in a reduced overall sample size over the sample sizes required for separate surveys.
• A more even spread of workload across years for internal ABS processing areas;
• Ongoing ABS resource efficiencies in having two instead of the current three surveys covering Innovation and BUIT every two years, as well as efficiencies that may be garnered by any overlap in longitudinal and cross-sectional sample; and
• More rapid development and adoption of best practice survey processes with associated reduced operational costs through the streamlining of business processes re-use of aspects of existing business processes, systems and methodologies.

The BCS aims to collect key measures on business characteristics to develop more relevant and effective government industry policies, supporting the Australian businesses particularly, the small and medium businesses. The data collected will support the BLD and will be used to build a statistical longitudinal database for public and private sector analysts. It is aimed to provide users with business characteristics data augmented with financial data from administrative sources and other existing ABS surveys.

Population and cross-classified outputs can be produced for most BCS content not just BUIT and Innovation The much larger volume of characteristics data (particularly, annual indicators of innovation and the ability to produce cross-classified outputs) has expanded the range of outputs.. These additional outputs, as well as the BLD CURF (and other analytical outputs) when released, result in a substantial increase in the amount of these types of information. The BCS also enables the production of a range of statistics that is complementary to financial data produced by the Annual Integrated Collection (AIC).

Key users of both the BLD and population (cross-classified) outputs are Department of Industry, Tourism and Resources (DITR), Department of Education, Science and Training (DEST), Department of Communication, Information Technology and the Arts (DCITA), Treasury and the Productivity Commission.

Conceptual framework
Conceptually, the BCS includes all 'economically active' businesses or business entities that have registered for an Australian Business Number (ABN), and have an active tax role; ie. remit GST for the BLD and Income Tax Withholding (ITW) for the population estimates. Further scoping is determined using the Standard Economic Classifications of Australia (SESCA) and the Australian and New Zealand Standard Industrial Classification (ANZSIC).

As the focus of this survey is on the market sector of the economy, it includes all business sizes- small, medium and large. Large businesses do not contribute to the BLD but are included in population and cross-sectional estimates. Non-employing businesses, such as sole proprietorships and partnerships, are included in the BLD component. The survey excludes some industries, mainly because they are dominated by government enterprises or classified as non profit institutions serving households, which are less important from an industry policy viewpoint.

Main outputs
There will be two distinct streams of output for the BCS - longitudinal unit record level (BLD) and population/cross sectional estimates.

The BLD will include characteristics data and other linked data, e.g. BIT, BAS, Trade and the resultant CURF(s) will provide a longitudinal view of small/medium business.

Population estimates for data collected in the BCS will be produced for all business sizes. This will include the cross-classification of some outputs by innovator status; degree of foreign ownership and broadband use. In alternate years detailed population estimates for Innovation and Business Use of Information Technology will be produced (some of these will be cross-classified with other indicators collected on the form.

Classifications