Pricing policy

Issues relating to price policy of a statistical office

Jan Tuček

Mon 29/10/2001

What is in fact the meaning of price policy of a statistical office? Is it the question of attaching specific prices to specific products, or a more general question of whether a state office should sell its output (which is, in fact, funded by the state budget) – i.e. information? We may also ask: what should be provided free and what for a fee? Or should we put it otherwise: which users will be charged and which not to get the product? An alternative wording might say: should all printed documents be provided for a fee and all documents published on the Internet free?

If we agree that some products will be provided for money, there will immediately arise further questions: what should the price involve? Should it be the quantity or the quality of work, or just material costs (costs on paper, machine time, etc.)? Should it correspond with how soon the work has been finished?

There arise a good deal of questions at the very beginning. Some have been dealt with globally; some just in several countries, some only in part, and some are still an issue. However, to make the issues explicit, or propose solutions, always leads to other issues that, again, lead to even other issues!

In spite of all the things I am going to specify further, I am well aware that the following statements hold true:

-The probability that we manage to unify all the things and form an entirely identical strategy virtually reaches the zero degree.

-In each country, there are different budgetary rules, different legislation (including acts on the statistical service), and different political pressure (which might involve pressure on whether the output of statistical office should be sold or not) – all these things have an impact on the subject at question.

-We cannot count on the auto-finance dissemination, i.e. that the profit coming from the dissemination would cover its costs.

The things mentioned above lead me to the following:

In my opinion, the products should be classified into standard and “tailor-made” products. Another classification might be made into basic and detailed (structured) products. Another way of classifying might involve the medium criterion and be like this: print products, electronic media products (on CD-ROM, floppy disk, etc), and information published on web pages.

The basic, or standard, output includes New Releases, publications (tables or regular publications), nomenclatures, registers, etc. There is hardly any doubt that this “created” statistical information, i.e. these compiled data files, extracts, publications, etc., should be offered free of charge to the central and local government authorities if the information provided has something to do with their competencies and relates to the territory covered by the competencies. Nevertheless, who is the right person or body to decide that the required information “has something to do” with the authority’s competencies? The same question applies to territorial competence (following the above-mentioned premise each municipality, and there might be several thousand municipalities in the country, could ask for a free copy of every publication that includes at least one piece of information relating to the municipality). The whole thing gets even more complicated if we define the “territorial competence” in a broader sense; data for one district alone have little explanatory power – it is only the comparison with a different district that can be interesting. Data provided might then relate to “the territorial competence” a level higher.

A request for information made by the above-mentioned authorities might be just a disguised demand of private entities that, of course, could not otherwise obtain the information free of charge. But is it justifiable (and useful) for a statistical office to check on its customers? Another cluster of questions relates to communication with the media and the academic community. I think we should provide information free of charge for the media, but there should be some advantages for the office in return – it should be possible for us to release information in the media when needed, or announce censuses, surveys, etc. through the media. As for the academic community, again there applies the issue of verifying whether the information is really used for scientific purposes (and what is more, research results are goods to sell, too).

A separate question is why a statistical office should charge any money for the standard output. The office is funded from the money coming from people’s tax returns and statistical information will serve users to make their activities more effective, which will consequently result in a greater volume of taxes paid, greater profit and in the end more money for the statistical office, etc. This, however, holds true only if users really pay their taxes as they should, and that the money is really used to fund the statistical office, which does not seem realistic in most (or all?) countries.

We are facing another fact proved by experience: when something is free of charge, it does not appear to have any value. Psychologically, the office itself deflates the value of information and negatively affects users’ attitude (are the goods good enough when they want no money for them?). Or does information rank among goods at all?

Output in the electronic form costs money as well – we need to fund development and implementation of new technologies, create graphic design and multimedia presentations. Working on a continual quality promotion is not for free either.

How should we handle the dissemination and commercial resale of the information we have provided? Another “big issue” to deal with. Is it feasible to be unanimous at least in this field? Should we discriminate in our approach of dealing with data between those coming from Eurostat (or other statistical offices) and our own (national) statistical products? Should we conclude “licence contracts” for a specific number of sold copies, or is it better to have a share in profit? (And how to check economical results and bookkeeping of cooperating companies?) We might also put it in a different way: it is highly probable that statistical information will serve users to make their activities more effective, which will consequently result in greater profit and greater volume of taxes paid, and in the end more money for the statistical office, etc.

What approach should we adopt to the distribution of e-products which our customers would embed into their own products and distribute these for the purpose of sale not only via CDs, but also via the Internet. Should the price be different (provided there is any price) if the user just makes a further sale of our finished product (and does nothing more), as it is the case when our product is embedded into a larger product?

Another big issue is the application of copyright and related provisions. Is a statistical office the “author” of its output? Is copyright applicable to, say, registers that are compiled using external sources and the statistical office serves just as an administrator? Is operating software included, or is it the only item to fall under copyright?

A separate issue is the presentation and use of “public” databases of statistical offices. Should the databases be provided free of charge or for a fee? Should they contain all aggregated, i.e. publishable, data or only some of them? How should we treat operating software?

To raise even more questions: how should one treat data classified as “individual data” which are publicly accessible in other sources, such as addresses of shops listed in the telephone directory, or turnover given in the annual report of a company)? There is high demand for such data among public and the statistical office has them available (they might, though, come from statistical processing – then the individual data must be protected; however, the data can just be taken over!). This relates also to data on municipalities, schools, etc. If the accessible individual data are included in our products, may we sell them?

What is desirable (or rather “what I would appreciate”)

I would appreciate most if there were transparent and unified rules for all, including Eurostat….

But let me be realistic:

  • There must be set up transparent and clear rules of similar structure and classification, governing the dissemination and price strategy, though the rules can differ in individual countries.
  • Entire output should be protected by copyright - ©.
  • It is necessary to specify carefully what is a “standard” product, and describe such products. Then the following should apply:
  • What is placed on the Internet is for all users free of charge.
  • Place on the Internet as many products as possible, including complete publications. There should be databases comprising data proper as well as metadata on the Internet.
  • The central and local government authorities can download all free of charge or have free access to an ftp server, which implies that if the product is available in the electronic form, a free hard copy need not be provided.

If the product is not available in the electronic form, central or local government body is entitled to obtain upon request one copy of a publication relating to its territorial competence (or to the competence a level higher – here the problem is of the choice of the higher territorial level – NUTS 5 vs. NUTS 4, … NUTS 2).

The central or local government body can make and distribute copies of a product in the electronic form on contractual grounds to its subsidiary units provided the body has undertaken that data would not be misused for purposes other than administrative or for commercial purposes.

  • If other users wish to obtain standard products via a channel other than the Internet, they should pay a price stated in advance. The price of printed publications should correspond with number of pages, nature of content (analytical publications will be more expensive), and form (colour and key publications will be more expensive). Publications provided on electronic media should be half the price of printed publications so that costs on paper, printing, copying, handling, etc. could be covered.
  • Authorities should be able to conclude redistribution (licence) contracts according to unified rules so that discrepancies among individual countries, or between a country and Eurostat, could be avoided.
  • Price of non-standard output is negotiated – it usually corresponds with the time spent on the document plus machine time, or with the number of items if the document is a sample; the price can be raised by an additional “express” fee or other extraordinary costs. Non-standard output, as well as other output, is never exclusive and becomes a standard product on the delivery to the customer. (Price, however, remains non-standard and is, in fact artificially, kept at the original level so that no user could be favoured at the expense of another, but has nothing to do anymore with costs and labour input because the product is already finished).
  • At least the amount of material costs should be available to the statistical office to be used to cover other costs related to dissemination (this is in contrast with some countries where the entire revenues of the statistical office goes to the state budget, which has a discouraging effect, as an increase in revenues necessarily causes an increase in costs, which is usually undesirable). As a result, we would be able to avoid such paradoxical situations as when we are able to sell a large quantity of the product at quite a high price, but have no money to buy paper to print the product document on.

Jan Tuček

řed. sekce Informačních služeb a prezentací

Jan Tucek

Director General

Information Services and Presentation

tel. ++4202 7405 2892

ing. Jan Tucek [

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