ENBES Steering Committee
Minutes, teleconference 2014-04-24 (Thursday), at 10:00CEST, 09:00 BST (UK)
Present: Daniel Assoulin, Mojca Bavdaz, Deirdre Giesen, Wim Kloek, Boris Lorenc, Ria Sanderson, Li-Chun Zhang
Excused: Jacek Kowalewski
1) Administration
a) Charge for taking meeting minutes: Wim
b) Discussion and adoption of agenda: agenda was adopted
c) Discussion and adoption of minutes of March 11th, 2014, meeting (as sent out by Deirdre): minutes were adopted
2) Short economic report (Wim): Wim presented in a file the current financial status of ENBES (+£611). Agreed that Wim will send out such a file in advance of every SC call in order to make his treasurer role transparent.
3) Communication/collaboration
a) Repository (Ria): For the internal ENBES documents investigated options were Google Drive, Dropbox, Wikispaces “Super Plan” (allowing customizable permissions), and Eurostat’s CROS portal. The former two are blocked by several of our employers, and the third implies an additional cost of about £100 annually. Therefore, it was decided to use for a test period (currently unspecified) the CROS portal. It should be possible to stop the automatic messages from the CROS portal (Wim will check and inform). The user group will be extended to all members of the working groups (action Wim).
b) Other matter: The working group will continue its work until finalisation (presenting a draft to the SC) on establishing its practices for maintaining and updating the “ENBES list” (the list of email addresses) and for sending ENBES newsletters and other material out using the list. Boris will inform Ria, Deirdre and Irena Bolko about where the current list (updated, with 220 entries) is.
4) Workshop
a) Topic
The idea of having the issue of statistical units as topic in the next workshop was supported. It is multi-dimensional and has implications for all phases of the production process. E.g. profiling, communication towards users, coverage and classification, but also the perspective of internal and external organisation. Li-Chun will produce a short introductory text. The issue will be further developed by the WG. The format remains somewhat unclear. At least the theme can be announced in the call for papers, but more pro-active actions are probably required to make it into a success (e.g. a preparatory seminar, related to the WGE). Explore including organisational economists or organisational scientists in the preparation. We revisit on the next SC after continuing with exchanges in the meantime.
b) Sponsorship: Boris and Wim are working on this. Further reports in the next meeting.
c) Organisational matter (committees, website): As decided on an earlier SC meeting, Daniel, Jacek, Wim and Boris developed a repository of earlier documents from the EESWs, organised into a folder structure. This is intended to be used in preparing new rounds of EESWs; they also developed a general timeline. In order to test the new internal documents repository, Boris started uploading these onto the CROS portal (and Boris will continue until finalisation). The ENBES wiki/website is to be used as the website for the next EESW, where workshop material is to be directly uploaded. The intention is to use/introduce a house style including the logo. It. This requires further collaboration with the WG on communication (via Ria and Wim)
5) Expansion
a) Seminars throughout 2014
Proposals for venues and topics of new seminars would be very welcome, everyone is encouraged to think about this and give proposals.
b) Student competition for EESW15: mentioned but postponed for later due to lack of time (Boris tasked to return with this).
6) Other business: none
7) Next call: May 20, 10:00CEST, 09:00 BST (UK)
8) Closing: at 11:00 CEST, 10:00 BST (UK).