Cardiff, UK 16 - 21 October 2005
Session No 9
Steve Vale, Office for National Statistics, UK
Convenors Report for Session 9: The Future of the Roundtable
This session was added to the agenda at the request of several participants, as a result of questions from senior managers about the value for money of the Roundtable and “city groups” in general. Participants agreed that the Roundtable had to respond to these challenges, and better demonstrate the value of the meetings, if it was to continue. The options of keeping things as they are, or ending the Roundtable were not supported.
The next scheduled meeting of the Roundtable is scheduled for autumn 2007 in Germany, as there was no volunteer to host a meeting in 2006. It was necessary to take positive action to maintain the momentum of the Roundtable.
To respond to these challenges, the Roundtable agreed to set up a small steering group, consisting of the previous host (now the UK), the next host (Germany), international organisations (OECD and Eurostat), and other countries that were prepared to make a substantive input. Volunteers included the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Turkey, and Australia or New Zealand (to be confirmed). The steering group will be reviewed at each meeting. The roles of this group will be:
- To actively engage the UN Statistical Commission and other senior management forums to promote the work of the Roundtable and seek their inputs regarding future activities.
- To develop links with other relevant international bodies, for example the World Bank, to ensure support for attendance by developing countries.
- To ensure coordination with meetings on related topics, for example the profiling meeting planned in Italy in 2006 and the MNE meeting proposed by the Nordic countries.
- To assist the host of the next meeting on matters relating to content.
Three concrete outputs for the steering group were agreed:
- A report of the 2005 meeting to be presented to the UN Statistical Commission (and any other relevant bodies) by spring 2006.
- A paper reviewing the achievements so far, and setting out the scope and goals of the Roundtable for future years, as well as details as to how these goals will be met, by mid-2007. In terms of the scope, the steering committee will consider the extent to which inputs from users and suppliers of data can be included in future meetings, the role of the Roundtable with respect to the growing field of register-based statistics, and how it can facilitate international training in register related topics. This paper will be circulated to the full Roundtable mailing list for comments before it is finalised.
- The steering group will request progress reports from Roundtable participants in summer 2006. These will be made public, with a summary of the main issues raised. They will also be used to finalise the topics for the agenda of the 2007 meeting.
The steering group will make all documents available on the Internet. Eurostat confirmed that the CIRCA site used to hold Roundtable meeting papers can also be used for this purpose.
Regarding the organisation of the Roundtable, participants raised the following points:
- The use of parallel sessions for the “national day” presentations on the Wednesday had been successful. Further use of parallel sessions, reporting back to plenary sessions, should be considered for future meetings. This could also help increase the relevance of meetings for developing countries.
- The time spent on progress reports should be reduced. It was agreed to limit this session to half a day for the next meeting, with a greater role for the convenor in drawing out key issues.
- Most participants favoured a five day meeting, particularly if it will only be held every two years. The possibility of using one day for a training session outside the formal meeting was raised. This will be considered for the next meeting.
- The sessions should take a wider view, taking input from suppliers and users. The host organisation should consider how to include those from their own country among their participants.
It was considered too early to finalise the agenda for the 2007 meeting, however the main themes thought likely to be of interest at that time were:
- Enterprise groups and the results of projects to develop registers of multi-national groups
- Business profiling, including identifying which administrative units are really active
- Business demography, other register-based statistics and uses (for example for disaster planning)
- Links with other registers (for example for agriculture or trade)
The agenda will be finalised and convenors agreed in autumn 2006.