Table of contents
0Introduction
1Administrative simplification techniques
1.1Gold-plating
1.2Questioning fewer enterprises
1.3Avoiding double questioning
1.4Changing survey frequency
1.5E-government
2Simplification of Structural Business Statistics
2.1History
2.2Influence of environmental factors
2.3Second simplification of the structural business statistics survey
2.3.1Reducing the number of surveyed enterprises
2.3.2Adjusting the periodicity of survey annexes
2.3.3Deleting sections and making more use of authentic sources
2.3.4E-government
2.3.4.1What is XBRL?
2.3.4.2Brief overview of the different taxonomy elements
2.3.4.3What does the SBS taxonomy look like ?
2.3.4.4System architecture of the application
2.3.4.5Summary of the ‘process changes’
2.4Project results
3Future
3.1Integration of production lines
3.2Further digitalisation of data collection
0Introduction
The consultancy firm Idea Consult, commissioned by the Federation of Enterprises in Belgium (FEB), has conducted a study into the administrative burden of statistics on enterprises. The study shows that the structural business statistics survey is one of the five most burdensome enterprise statistics, which translates to a yearly cost of €6,412,800. As a result of the study by Idea Consult and by demand of the Administrative Simplification Service (ASS), the Directorate General Statistics and Economic Information examined the possibility to simplify the structural business statistics survey. A “Business Process Reengineering” exercise (BPR) has resulted in 5 simplification targets:
- reduce the number of surveyed enterprises;
- reduce the periodicity of survey annexes;
- make better use of administrative sources;
- develop a web application based on XBRL technology;
- pre-fill sections of which the content should already be known by the DGSEI.
In this document we will first focus on the different simplification techniques and briefly clarify the purpose of each technique. In the second part we will illustrate the simplification of the structural business statistics survey more closely and, to conclude, we will elaborate on the specific results of the simplification.
1Administrative simplification techniques
Numerous simplification techniques are available. Usually a combination of different techniques is used to simplify a survey. Below we will present an overview of a number of regularly used techniques for the simplification of surveys in Belgium.
1.1Gold-plating
Gold-plating is a technique used to check if a national survey complies with the European regulations that form the basis of the survey. It is a commonly used technique to check if Belgian surveys do not exceed the necessary requirements to comply with European regulations (concerning both content and surveyed population). When it appears that the survey asks for more data than necessary and there is no other (national) reason to do so, the corresponding sections are deleted from the survey.
1.2Questioning fewer enterprises
Questioning fewer enterprises is, next to abolishing a survey, one of the most efficient simplification techniques. This technique comprises several actions, such as switching from a census to a sample survey, setting or raising a threshold value, coordinating sample surveys,... All of these actions are aimed at lifting the administrative burden for a certain group of enterprises or at spreading the burden over as many enterprises as possible.
1.3Avoiding double questioning
The aim of avoiding double questioning is to avoid asking the same information to an enterprise twice. Public authorities need to make maximum use of the data they already possess. This can be done by using authentic sources. These are monitored databases, acknowledged and managed by the government and in which an entire range of information is available on both enterprises as well as citizens (e.g. annual accounts from Central Balance Sheet Office, Central Social Security Database, National Register of Persons, Central Company Database,...).
1.4Changing survey frequency
Enterprises are required to periodically deliver information to public authorities for each statistical obligation. Sending out a survey less frequently saves a great deal of time and avoids administrative burden. When reducing the frequency of a survey, it is important to find the right balance between the administrative burden on the one hand and the information frequency on the other hand.
1.5E-government
The aforementioned simplification techniques mainly focus on:
avoiding questioning enterprises;
limiting the survey by not asking for the same information twice and by limiting a survey as much as possible to what Europe deems strictly necessary.
The question remains, however, what should be done if questioning an enterprise is ‘unavoidable’ and the necessary information is not yet known to public administration? The answer is e-government. E-government mainly stresses the simplification of the B2G information transfer by limiting the actions or research for enterprises to comply with the statistical requirements.
The simplification of the structural business statistics survey combines the different aforementioned techniques, especially stressing e-government.
2Simplification of Structural Business Statistics
2.1History
The Directorate General Statistics and Economic Information (Statistics Belgium) carries out a mandatory yearly survey on the structural characteristics of businesses (employment, activity, production, costs and investments). A similar survey is organised in all countries of the European Union. These statistics are essential to pursue an enterprise policy at European, national and regional level.
The structural business statistics survey was subject to administrative simplification for the first time in 2002. Two simplification techniques were used at that time:
the deletion of sections of which the value was already known in an administrative (authentic) source (e.g. CBSO, Central Social Security Database,…);
a first limited e-government initiative that enabled the transfer of a number of documents by floppy disk to Statistics Belgium.
This simplification resulted in a restriction in the size of the questionnaires (for some forms up to 40% of the sections were deleted) and 8% of respondents used the e-government option.
2.2Influence of environmental factors
The environment in which Statistics Belgium needs to operate is constantly on the move. Different factors have caused the second administrative simplification project of the structural business statistics survey:
European initiatives and regulations: a prime example is the transition from NACE Rev. 1.1 to NACE Rev. 2 and the change of the Regulation on the structural business statistics survey. Also the output of the Task Force XBRL (2006) was of major importance to the second simplification process, which we will discuss further on.
Statistics users: the needs of statistics users evolve quickly. Users want more and more quality information. The 2002 simplification caused our national users to be dissatisfied with the quality of the annexes[1] to the structural business statistics survey. By deleting a number of sections from the SBS form, the link between the form and the annexes had disappeared. This resulted in enterprises no longer understanding what was expected of them, with baleful consequences for the response quality.
Administrative simplification: after 2002 pressure on Statistics Belgium to simplify surveys increased gradually.
“Time-to-market”: Users not only want more figures but they also want to receive them faster. This prompts public authorities to accelerate the processing of the surveys.
Cost reduction: As in most countries, also the Belgian government needs to reorganise its finances. This implies, among other things, that the means are scarce and that only limited means are available to support new initiatives.
Retirements: In the next five years, Statistics Belgium will see a large portion of its staff retire. By then an estimated 40% of the total staff will have reached retirement age or will have been retired. Influx of new staff will be limited, partly due to the necessary cutbacks (see above).
Integration of different technologies as major challenge: one of the largest challenges for public administration is to go along with constantly evolving IT tools. In the last few years, especially internet use has been adopted further.
Reducing paper-based questionnaires: paper-based surveys are gradually going out of use and discredit Statistics Belgium. Replacing paper-based questionnaires by electronic alternatives is becoming a more useful solution.
Study by the Federation of Enterprises in Belgium (FEB): In the middle of 2007 the FEB published a study in which the administrative burden caused by surveys was examined. The study showed that the structural business statistics survey is one of the five most burdensome enterprise statistics, which translates to a yearly cost of € 6,412,800 (see figure 1).
Figure 1: Study Federation Of Enterprises in Belgium on administrative burden caused by statistics, 2007
2.3Second simplification of the structural business statistics survey
The influence of the factors mentioned above resulted in a new simplification of the structural business statistics survey in 2008. The aims of the simplification project were:
to reduce the number of surveyed enterprises;
to adjust the periodicity of survey annexes;
to delete sections and make more use of authentic sources;
to offer a full electronic (web) survey.
2.3.1Reducing the number of surveyed enterprises
Until survey year 2008, the sample of the structural business statistics survey was compiled as follows:
all enterprises with more than 20 employees or a turnover of more than 8 million euros were surveyed exhaustively;
enterprises below this threshold were selected randomly.
The second simplification brought with it the following changes:
The exhaustive limit was raised: all enterprises with 50 employees or more are still surveyed exhaustively. When these enterprises at NACE 4-digit level do not cover at least 50% of the total turnover from that sector, a number of enterprises with 20 to 49 employees or a turnover of more than 8 million euros is added.
Other enterprises (SMEs) are included in a rotating sample. The enterprises are divided in 3 main groups: industry and construction, commerce, hotel and catering, and services. Each year (T), the SMEs from one of the three sample groups are surveyed. For the years T+1 and T+2, the SMEs from the sector that are surveyed in T are re-added to the sample by a positive coordination but they do not receive survey forms. Based on their declarations from year T and data available from administrative (authentic) sources an estimate is made. In T+3 all sectors are surveyed and the non-exhaustive group receives a negative coordination, which tries to avoid SMEs that were surveyed in T. This method guarantees SMEs a minimal exemption of two years and spreads the burden optimally over all SMEs.
2.3.2Adjusting the periodicity of survey annexes
Until survey year 2008 enterprises filled in up to 4 annexes to the SBS survey form each year. This increased the survey burden on enterprises considerably. In 2008, the frequency of the survey annexes was therefore reduced from yearly to five-yearly.
2.3.3Deleting sections and making more use of authentic sources
2002 saw the deletion of a number of sections from the survey. Analysis in 2008 showed, however, that there were still a number of personnel sections that could be deleted if the possibilities from the Central Social Security Database were used.
2.3.4E-government
As mentioned above, the possibility to fill in a limited number of forms electronically and send them to Statistics Belgium on a disk was introduced in 2002. This was not a major success (it was used by 8% of respondents) because the procedure was time-consuming and there was no possibility to send all forms electronically. The result was that an enterprise could send the SBS form electronically but still needed to send the annexes on paper by post. It also appeared that by deleting numerous sections the surveyed enterprises lost a great deal of time by working out what value needed to be reported. The logical form structure similar to the pre-2002 simplification forms had disappeared and the link with the accounting structure (annual accounts) had faded. The result was that many inconsistencies arose when Statistics Belgium matched data from the declarations with data from administrative sources. These needed to be corrected afterwards by Statistics Belgium together with the enterprises, which delayed the processing time of surveys.
In 2008, Statistics Belgium decided to develop a web survey that needed to meet the following requirements:
Generic application: the application should not be tailored to the structural business statistics survey but should be useable for several surveys without the need for reprogramming;
the application should offer the possibility to upload and validate files from accounting software of respondents;
the application should allow the manual completion of the survey in one or more sessions, based on web pages.
To improve the intelligibility of the form, many sections that were deleted in 2002 were re-added. To avoid double questioning these sections must be filled in beforehand in the application.
At the end of the declaration there should be an option to print a report containing the data sent by the enterprises. This could serve as a proof of declaration for the enterprises.
The application must be entirely based on the XBRL standard. Two reasons are behind this choice:
-Since 2007 enterprises must file their annual accounts at the National Bank of Belgium according to the XBRL standard. Because the structural business statistics survey is closely related to these annual accounts, it was a logical decision to choose the same format, keeping in mind administrative simplification.
-In 2006 Statistics Belgium was a member of the Task Force XBRL. Its aim was to promote the use of XBRL for statistical purposes. One of the results of this Task Force was an OpenSource architecture that enables the automatic creation of web pages based on an XBRL taxonomy. The Proof of Concept was developed together with Belgium. This architecture would eventually form the basis of the current web application.
2.3.4.1What is XBRL?
XBRL is an electronic language that has been specially developed for the exchange of business economic information through the internet. Throughout the years many ways of exchanging information have surfaced, aimed at single or specific needs, which led to many different formats. These require the data to be entered again, which increases the error risk and causes double use.
Meanwhile economic actors are asking for information updates more frequently and require more transparency as part of “corporate governance”. Because of a lack of harmonisation the below spaghetti model is the unfortunate result; the information exchange is slow, difficult and expensive.
Figure 2: Spaghetti model
A solution had to be found that meets the demands by enterprises on the one hand to rationalise internal and external business economic reporting, and by authorities and other users on the other hand to protect the quality of received data, whilst also limiting the total incurred costs. XBRL is an interesting option for these demands.
XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language) is an open standard based on XML (Extensible Markup Language) for the electronic collection and transfer of business economic data through the internet. The idea of the XBRL language is to identify each concept (e.g. ‘turnover’) and add it to a ‘taxonomy’, which is similar to a dictionary. These concepts, brought together in a structured way, can be recognised, processed and represented in different ways, depending on the intended use (e.g. ‘annual accounts’ or ‘SBS’).
The use of XBRL has many advantages:
- XBRL increases the quality of reported data because it renders manipulations such as manually re-entering data unnecessary;
- the XBRL format not only facilitates exchange in file format, but also processing and analysis of the data;
- XBRL also keeps down the costs for the provision of information, since its format enables the selection, re-use and representation of data according to specific needs.
Figure 3: XBRL use
This optimisation and these cost savings can only be reached fully if as many economic actors as possible participate in the integration and standardisation of data exchange.
Both enterprises (who provide the data) as well as regulators (who collect the data) and analysts (who use the data) need to cooperate in this matter.
2.3.4.2Brief overview of the different taxonomy elements
As mentioned above, a taxonomy can be compared to a dictionary, in which elements are defined once and re-used afterwards by other users.
The essence of the XBRL format is the unique/single identification of each data element in the taxonomy. Technically speaking a taxonomy consists of a “schema” (.xsd file) and a number of “linkbases”[2] (.xml files), that contain links between and with the schema elements.
Figure 4: the different components of a taxonomy
Schema: The different elements are defined in a taxonomy schema. Every element receives a unique name and is described based on a number of characteristics (e.g. data type).
Linkbases are “xml files” that contain more information about the elements of a schema. Five “linkbases” are distinguished:
Label linkbase: the Label linkbase contains the name in four languages (English, Dutch, French, German) for each element that appears in the Schema. A definition can also be added for each element.
Presentation Linkbase: The “Presentation linkbase” sets the hierarchy and the order of elements. It establishes the tree structure of a document.
Reference linkbase: This linkbase is used to link elements from the "XSD schema" to a reference. This can be a legal provision (for example a European Regulation or a Royal Decree), a reference from the accounts or any other reference.
Calculation linkbase: The “Calculation linkbase” describes how elements need to be added up or subtracted. As far as checking is concerned this linkbase is relatively limited. It only allows additions and subtractions. The calculation link establishes a relationship between the so-called "summation element” and a “contributing element”.The extent to which the latter element contributes to the former is expressed in a certain “weight”, which can be 1, 0 or -1. In the first case there will be an addition, in the second there will be no calculation and in the last case there will be a subtraction.[3]