Forward-Looking Feedback Workshop on Standardisation
The Hague, 30 and 31 May, 2013
Report (final version)
Annexes to this report: 1. List of participants
2. Agenda
The venue of the workshop was the site of Statistics Netherlands in The Hague. The meeting started on May 30th at 9.30 a.m. (registration of the participants) and was closed on May 31st at 3.30 p.m. There were 35 participants from 22 NSIs (including the Australian ABS, as observer) plus three other organisations (Eurostat, UNECE and TNO), see Annex 1 to this report. As intended, the participation was diverse: There were representatives from both operational and strategic levels, specialists as well as generalists, representatives from various work fields (e.g. methodology, IT) and from various functional groups, including the ESSnet on standardisation.
The goals of the workshop were (1) to seek feedback on the results of the Sponsorship on Standardisation (hereafter: the Sponsorship), (2) to discuss the way forward, both on an operational and a strategic level, and (3) to prepare a set of draft recommendations for the Sponsorship for subsequent ESSC consideration.
The following documents were sent to the participants before the meeting:
o Agenda
o ESSC progress report on the Sponsorship
o Evaluation report of the Census Hub on behalf of the Sponsorship, by Ingo Planz and Sven Claussen
o The paper “Standardisation in the ESS”, by Barteld Braaksma et al, presented at the NTTS conference in Brussels, February 2013
o Information on the ESSnet on Standardisation, by Csaba Ábry
o Draft recommendations from the Sponsorship
o List of participants
The presentations of the workshop and other relevant material can be accessed at the CROS portal: http://www.cros-portal.eu/content/essnet-standardisation.
THURSDAY, 30 MAY
Session 1. The Sponsorship and the workshop
The workshop was opened by Mr Gosse van der Veen, Director-General of Statistics Netherlands, co-chair of the Sponsorship and host of the workshop.
The aim of session 1, which was chaired by Mr Gosse van der Veen, was to provide the participants with the information necessary to have a fruitful discussion on the results of the Sponsorship so far, and to prepare the ground for the discussion on the recommendations in session 4. Two presentations were given.
The first presentation was given by Mr Daniel Defays, Acting Director of Directorate B (Corporate statistical and IT services) of Eurostat and co-chair of the Sponsorship. The subject of the presentation was the need for standardisation and the role of the Sponsorship.
There was some time for questions. Issues raised were the following:
o There is a need for quantifying the costs and benefits of standardisation, but the measurability of the costs may be higher than those of the benefits.
o The standardisation efforts have to be framed by an Enterprise Architecture (EA), but the Sponsorship is not in charge of developing an EA. The High Level Group on the Modernization of Statistical Products and Services is active at the global level, and there are other high-level groups. There is a need for alignment. Reaction: Within the ESS, alignment will have to take place in the context of the ITDG in combination with DIME and at the top level of the ESS. Many other efforts are undertaken to coordinate policies at the highest level. The Sponsorship is one of them.
o There is a need for resources to sustain the standardisation efforts, for instance at the implementation stage and for technical support to NSIs. Reaction: Since for the time being production is not really shared within the ESS, there is no common budgetary system. If the ESS is going to create a Centre of Competence, or otherwise share production efforts, this will (have to) change.
The second presentation was given by Mr Wim Kloek (Eurostat; Sponsorship secretariat). He presented the results of the Sponsorship so far, as described in the NTTS paper “Standardisation in the ESS” by Barteld Braaksma et al.
A short time was left for questions. One issue was raised:
o It was remarked that no groups seem to be envisaged for the technical preparation of standards. Reaction: The documents behind the paper presented do acknowledge the need for technical preparation. No decision has been taken so far on the precise form of preparation. A possibility is to use some type of “pressure cooking”, such as the current sprints to design a common statistical production architecture (CSPA).
The presentations were followed by an introduction to the rest of the programme by Mr Peter Struijs (Statistics Netherlands; workshop organisation).
Session 2. Feedback by the participants
The aim of session 2, which was chaired by Mr Emanuele Baldacci (Istat), was to obtain feedback from the participants on the results of the Sponsorship so far.
The participants were distributed over six groups, which were asked to give their reaction to the results of the Sponsorship as presented in the NTTS paper. Each group had a chair. The subjects for the groups were the following:
group 1 : The definition of “standard” and criteria to be met (NTTS 2.1 and 2.2)
Chair: Ms Dace Deinate (Central Statistical Bureau of Latvia)
group 2: Inventory of standards; categories of normative documents (NTTS 2.3 – 2.5)
Chair: Mr Csaba Ábry (Hungarian Central Statistical Office)
group 3: The standardisation process (NTTS chapter 3)
Chair: Ms Katalin Szép (Hungarian Central Statistical Office)
group 4: Business architecture (NTTS 4.1 – 4.3)
Chair: Mr Rune Gløersen (Statistics Norway)
group 5: Scenarios of integration (NTTS 4.4)
Chair: Mr Peter Schmidt (Federal Statistical Office of Germany)
group 6: The SWOT analysis method and tool (NTTS chapter 5)
Chair: Ms Tatjana Novak (Statistical Office of the Republic of Slovenia)
The groups were asked to answer the following questions for the group subject:
o Is it clear what is proposed?
o What is your general opinion on the approach proposed?
o What is your opinion on the applicability of the proposals
o in the ESS in general?
o from the perspective of your institute?
o Do you have suggestions for improving the proposals?
The group sessions were followed by a plenary session in which the chairpersons presented the results of the group discussions, which was followed by a general discussion. Several issues were raised:
o All groups showed agreement on the general thrust of the proposals. However, in a number of cases more clarity was asked for. In particular, the concept of “consensus” was not entirely clear, as was the distribution of roles (who will be responsible for what, who will have to approve what?). The use of more examples would help.
o It may be advisable to start with a couple of rather simple standards in order to get early results and tune the standardisation process.
o The applicability of the proposals was generally judged favourably. However, there was a general concern that the SWOT tool seemed to be rather complex.
o For standards, attention will have to be paid to language issues and key-words.
o Since standards are developed with the intention that they will be implemented and used, there needs to be a guarantee that there will be enough financial means for the implementation stage. Funding for the development of standards is not enough.
o The cost-benefit analysis cannot be complete at the development stage of a standard, because total costs and benefits depend on decisions on the specifics of implementation, e.g. the way costs are shared, available support etc. The SWOT tool facilitates primarily the decision making at the development stage, when costs and benefits have to be expressed mainly in strategic terms. At the implementation stage, when decision making usually has a more direct financial impact, the cost-benefit analysis must be updated and supplemented at intervals, especially preceding the GO/NO GO decisions.
o For the business architecture, management commitment – and their proper understanding – is essential. It must be clear how modules fit into the architecture. If possible, agreement on architecture should be reached not only at ESS level, but also at the global level.
o For the four scenarios of integration one may consider using a continuous scale, rather than just four scenarios. The areas of integration may not have the right granularity. While policy and process chain management may be out of scope, the activities to discuss the levels of integration need to be described in much more detail.
o In some cases the document seems to address NSIs, whereas in some other cases the national statistical system as a whole seems to be the relevant level. The question was raised, if integration could also be discussed for a subset of countries.
o It was remarked that insufficient attention is given in the document to interfaces.
o It was remarked that some background material had been prepared in the context of the Sponsorship, in which some aspects of standardisation had been worked out, such as on the standardisation process. Therefore some of the issues may not be as serious as they may seem just on the basis of the presentation in the workshop. It would be preferable to make these background materials available on the CROS portal.
Session 3. Standardisation beyond the ESS
The aim of session 3, which was chaired by Mr Jean-Pierre Grandjean (INSEE), was to broaden the view of the workshop, because the ESS interacts with the wider world: the global statistical community and the non-statistical world. This is relevant to the choice, development and implementation of standards. For this reason, two external speakers were invited to give a presentation.
The first presentation was given by Mr Erwin Folmer, advisor interoperability and standards, of TNO Netherlands. His presentation covered various aspects of standardisation that are not specific to statistics, such as interoperability drivers, semantic standards, the quality of standards, the management of standards, the need to have a short development period and ways to achieve this (e.g. the use of pressure cooker sessions), ways to make sure that standards are actually implemented (don’t go for perfection and total support, make use of iterations, look for early adopters), and costs and benefits (think about cost allocation to stakeholders). He also stressed that the most successful standards are those developed and maintained by users (while 80% of ISO standards are never used), and gave examples where that works even in very competitive markets.
The second presentation was given by Mr Steve Vale (UN Economic Commission for Europe), and covered the relationship between standards and statistical production architectures, in particular at world level. Several aspects were discussed, such as: challenges; the relationship between GSBPM, GSIM, methods and technology; the CSPA; and the use of architectures to overcome stovepipes. A reference is www1.unece.org/stat/platform/display/hlgbas.
The first working day was concluded by Mr Gosse van der Veen. It was followed by a social programme, consisting of a visit to the Escher Palace and a dinner, during which the Director of the International Statistical Institute (ISI), Ms Ada van Krimpen, gave a presentation about the ISI and the International Year of Statistics. Those NSIs that have not yet registered for participation in the International Year of Statistics, were asked to consider doing so.
FRIDAY, 31 MAY
Session 4. The way forward
Before the workshop, the Sponsorship had drafted 28 recommendations to be discussed during the workshop. After the workshop, and taking into account the opinions of the workshop, the set of recommendations will be revised by the Sponsorship and submitted to the ESSC. The aim of session 4, which was jointly chaired by Mr Daniel Defays and Mr Gosse van der Veen, was to hear the opinion of the workshop on the draft recommendations, to get suggestions for additional recommendations and to enhance convergence and support for the joint effort to improve standardisation in the ESS.
First, a so-called soapbox session was held, in which the participants were given the opportunity to ask attention for any topic they wanted to put forward in the context of the workshop. Five participants took the opportunity to take the floor:
o Mr Alistair Hamilton (Australian Bureau of Statistics, ABS) had prepared a presentation. He presented the ABS perspective on standardisation in the context of the comprehensive business transformation programme (ABS 2017) currently taking place. Important benefits are expected from standardisation and interoperability. The approach taken by the Sponsorship seems to make much sense, and the ABS may benefit from what has been achieved so far, such as the work on the inventory and the standardisation process. The link to architecture is also important to the ABS. The ABS defines a so-called capability architecture, in which, for each business activity, six capabilities are looked at (people, methods, processes, systems, standards & frameworks, other resources). The ABS does not use a systematic SWOT analysis, but recognises the importance of knowing the business case and the added business value. It sees benefits in the top-down selection and adoption of standards, but looking at standards in related industries is also important, as is linkage of standards. The ABS is in favour of making “industrial standardisation” a global effort and is interested, if possible, to be involved in the ESSnet as an observer.
o Ms Stefania Macchia (Istat) asked attention for some issues related to the SWOT tool. The assumptions made about infrastructural arrangements, etc., would have to be clear when deploying the SWOT tool. The person responsible for completion – for the institute as a whole – must be known. And one may consider using the SWOT also for analysing the current situation.
o Mr Faiz Alsuhail (Statistics Finland) asked attention for the relationship between standardisation and enterprise architecture in the context of DIME. He also asked what would happen after the Sponsorship is dissolved.
o Ms Katalin Szép (Hungarian CSO) took the floor to explain the viewpoint of the Hungarian Central Statistical Office. The subject of standardisation has been discussed at the meeting of the Methodology-IT Board. This is a high-level board, where the representatives of all of the subject matter and functional departments are present. The recommendations generally were supported. Some issues were raised, like to include normative documents under development in the intended inventory too, to facilitate assurance of their consistency. Another issue was based on experiences, that the standardisation at EU level needs adequate structures and resources at national level, like a local expert group to be involved in the piloting and to support implementation of SDMX institution wide.