International Roundtable on Business Survey Frames
Australia
Dennis Robson
Australian Bureau of Statistics
October 2006
Country Progress Report 2006

The ABS Business Register

The ABS Business Register comprises two populations, referred to respectively as the ABS Maintained Population (ABSMP) and the ATO Maintained Population (ATOMP). The ABSMP covers all businesses with complex business structures, the majority of government units, and the majority of businesses with significant employment in more than one State for which State data are required. The ATOMP covers all other businesses, which are sourced from the Australian Business Register (ABR) which is administered by the Australian Tax Office (ATO). The following table shows the number of live units on the BR as at September 2006.

Live Units
ABS Maintained Population
Enterprise Groups (EGs) / 9,000*
Enterprises (ENs) / 10,000
Type of Activity Units (TAUs) / 20,000
ATO Maintained Population
Australian Business Numbers (ABNs) / 3,400,000

* Includes 4,000 EGs with agricultural activities for which special information is required.

Organisation

The Business Register Unit (BRU) is part of the Economic Statistics Data Centre (ESDC), which broadly has responsibility for all pre-input editing functions for most Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) business surveys. Currently, there are a number of smaller collections which haven't 'docked' with the BRU and other parts of the ESDC. A project is currently underway to develop a framework and timeline for moving functions for these collections to the ESDC environment.

The BRU has just over 70 staff, including several part-timers and is organised into the following functional units (although much of the work undertaken in the BRU has a cross cutting element):

The Large Business Unit (LBU), which operates across two sites in Melbourne and Sydney. The majority of BRU staff (about 38) work in this unit and are involved in profiling the more significant and/or complex enterprise groups. The LBU also undertakes Key Provider Management services, which incorporate data collection coordination, data editing and data confrontation between selected surveys for 50 of the largest Enterprise Groups in Australia.

Population and Administration (PMA) is a small unit (4 staff) which coordinates communication with Business Register (BR) clients, including other ESDC units. It is responsible for maintaining the less complex ABS maintained businesses through survey feedback, the use of ATO data and ad hoc profiling. The unit also manages processes and issues related to the movement of businesses between the ABS and ATO Maintained populations.

Frames Integration is also a small team (3 staff), which is focussed on the migration of non-register based business collections to the Business Register. The role includes establishing standard processes and technical solutions for the migration and maintenance of their units on the Business Register.

Quality and Knowledge Management (QKM) has responsibility for improving the quality and usability of the BR and to support the other areas of the BRU in managing quality of their operations and processes. In particular, QKM monitors and reports on the quality of data (e.g. industry coding) on the BR and is responsible for providing training on BR systems and profiling procedures to BRU and other ABS staff and maintaining documentation relating to BR procedures and systems. The QKM unit comprises 14 staff and is located in Melbourne.

Data and Technology Management (DTM), which is responsible for the support and maintenance of Business Register systems. DTM also manage the acquisition of taxation data from the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) which is used as the base for the ABS BR. The DTM unit comprises 8 staff and is located in Melbourne.

Agriculture Support, which is located in Hobart. The unit currently comprises 9 staff and has responsibility for updating the Agricultural component of the Business Register, based on survey and/or census feedback. It also provides support to the Agriculture Business Statistics Centre which is also located in the Hobart office.

Earlier this year, a separate project team was established to manage the migration of the Business Register (BR) operating system, called Inteframe, to a new platform. The team comprises 3 project management staff together with 10 programmer support staff.

For 2006-07, the total budget for the BRU, including technology and programmer support costs but excluding the Inteframe Migration Project (IMP), is $AUD 5.5 million.

Current Issues and Future Plans

  1. On 28 February 2006, the ABS and Statistics New Zealand released a new classification of industrial activity, the Australian and New Zealand Standard Industrial Classification (ANZSIC) 2006, which replaced the 1993 version of ANZSIC. A paper describing how the new classification was being implemented on the ABS Business Register was presented at last year's Roundtable. It is pleasing to report that the stock of units on the ABS Business Register was coded to ANZSIC 2006 in times for business survey frames to be selected from June 2006. Until June 2009, the BRU will be required to 'reverse code' new births to the BR to enable frames to be selected on both the old and new versions of ANZSIC.
  2. Details of plans to migrate the ABS Business Register to a new platform were presented at last year's Roundtable. The major driver was the decision by Fujitsu to no longer support the ODBII object oriented database system beyond December 2007. The Inteframe Migration Project has formally commenced and the target implementation date for the new system is March 2008. The focus for the project is to ensure migration of current system functionality without disruption to ongoing business. The architecture model has been confirmed; data storage will be in an Oracle relational database with the business logic object based using Java. The new design will enable better integration with other ABS systems.
  3. The BRU is currently undertaking a review of maintenance strategies for each of the two component populations (ABSMP and ATOMP) of the BR and the management of the movement of units between these two populations. Specifically, it is intended to review and improve the following areas;
  • Frequency of profiling: The capacity of the BRU to update all units in the ABSMP with regularity deserves to be revisited. Currently only about 50% of the ABSMP is maintained on a regular basis. The recent survey conducted to ANZSIC06 code ABSMP units demonstrated the scope for using better streaming and simplified profiling questionnaires.
  • Better data sources for prioritising maintenance work: Using quarterly tax data to better target significant and/or changed enterprise groups is worthy of further investigation. Currently, enterprise groups with employment of more than 200 are selected for profiling. There may be better indicators (eg. at an industry level) for selection.
  • Better ways of balancing the needs of client collections: With an increasingly diverse set of collections making use of the BR, we need to explore new ways of balancing and optimising the maintenance effort we invest (eg. reviewing triggers criteria, specific Financial Surveys, Labour, etc, requirements).
  • Quality of industry coding: Given experience over recent years, we need to evaluate options for improving the overall quality of industry coding for the ABSMP.
  • Scope and coverage: Are the current scope and coverage of the BR ideal in terms of defined tax roles?
  1. In conducting such a review of the maintenance strategy, there are some synergistic advantages to simultaneously reviewing the operations and effectiveness of the Key Provider Management (KPM) program. Accordingly, a KPM review is included within the scope of this work.
  2. There are a number of smaller ABS business collections which haven't 'docked' with the BRU and other parts of the ESDC. A project is currently underway to develop a framework and timeline for moving functions for these collections to the ESDC environment. A significant objective of this project is to have all business collections in the ABS utilising Business Register identifiers and storing these on the ABS Provider Integration Management System (PIMS). The BRU will play an important role in furthering these aspects of the ABS' integrated management of business providers.
  3. Of ongoing strategic importance to the ABS Business Register is the relationship with the ATO. Over the next two years, the ATO is embarking on a significant change program, and the ABS will need to be vigilant to ensure its data needs are met. At the same time, we should be looking for opportunities to improve the acquisition and processing of data from the ATO. The BRU recently completed an audit of all ABR data items obtained from the ATO. This audit identified critical data items for the ABS, as well as a number of data items obtained from the ATO which are not used by the ABS. The next stage of this project will be to develop quality measure for (at least) the high priority data items.
  4. A Regulation Taskforce reported to Government in January 2006 regarding strategies for the reduction of regulatory burden on business. The report recommended, in part, that agencies adopt a Standard Business Reporting (SBR) model similar to the Netherlands model and systematically utilise information technology across all levels of government. Should the government decide to adopt this recommendation, it is expected to have a significant impact on the future directions of the BRU, and more broadly on ABS business surveys.