Paris Microdata Workshop – 23-25 June 2010
A second annual workshop was held in Paris, in June 2010 to discuss international collaboration in providing access to microdata. The workshop was attended on this occasion by representatives from the statistical organisations in Great Britain, the Netherlands, Germany, Canada, the United States of America, Italy, Eurostat, and was jointly hosted by ABS and OECD. Further workshops are planned for 2011 and into the future.
This year’s workshop achieved some useful steps towards this long term goal, and also established an official purpose and list of objectives for the group.
The official purpose is for "statistical Institutes working together on practical steps to advance cross-border access to, and analysis of, microdata by leading the way and taking into account the needs of researchers and policy makers".
The objectives of the group have been established, as follows:
- Increase coordination and communication between institutes and other expert groups to adopt best practice, promote a common understanding and to minimise duplication of work in furthering international access to microdata;
- Advise and make recommendations to Chief Statisticians based on our own work and advice from other expert groups and practitioners;
- Undertake work commissioned by Chief Statisticians; and
- Serve as a forum for other countries or other expert groups to raise issues.
Other topics discussed at the workshop resulted in some very useful information sharing and agreement regarding the way forward. These include:
- The potential use of DDI and SDMX, with the group agreeing to trial the use of these standards by each of the attending National Statistical Organisations (NSOs). Labour Force Survey microdata is currently being considered as the best option for trialling DDI within each organisation as there are many similar concepts within this topic across NSOs;
- Working with the Labour Force Survey Harmonisation project, a project being coordinated by OECD. This work ties in with the topic of DDI implementation;
- Information sharing about new microdata developments within each of the NSOs as well as presentations from new participants about how microdata access is currently undertaken and any current issues; and
- Agreement within the group to co-write a ‘directions’ paper exploring the options and recommending the way forward for international microdata access. This paper is to be presented to the 2011 CSTAT meeting.
NSOs play a very significant role in the provision of access to microdata. Use of microdata by governments, academics and commercial organisations is an expanding business, and it is vitally important that NSOs stay relevant by actively facilitating access to high quality, timely microdata, both nationally and internationally.
For more information, please contact Michelle Gifford on (02) 6252 7499 or michelle.gifford@abs.gov.au.
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