The Use of Administrative Sources for Economic Statistics An Overview

1. The Use of Administrative Sources for Economic StatisticsAn Overview Steven Vale Office for National Statistics UK

2. Contents • Definitions • Advantages of using administrative data • Common problems • Quality of administrative data • Using administrative data in practice • Conclusions

3. Narrow Definition

4. Wider Definition

5. Administrative sources are sources containing information which is not primarily collected for statistical purposes.

6. Reasons for this Definition • Privatisation of some government functions • Growth of private sector “value-added re-sellers” • User interest in new types of data

7. Benefits of Administrative Data • Cost • Surveys / censuses are expensive, administrative data are often “free” • Response burden • Reduced burden on data suppliers • Statistics can be compiled more frequently with no extra burden

8. Benefits of Administrative Data • Coverage • Full coverage of target population • No survey errors and lower non-response • Better small-area data • Timeliness (sometimes!) • Public image • Making use of existing data can enhance the prestige of a statistical organisation by making it seem more efficient

9. Population Census Costs2000-2001 • UK, €367m, €6.2 per person • Austria, €56m, €6.9 per person • Finland, €0.8m, €0.2 per person Source: Eurostat – Documentation of the 2000 round of population and Housing censuses in the EU, EFTA and Candidate Countries; Table 22

10. Common Problems • Administrative units do not always coincide with statistical units • Conversion via automatic rules for simple cases • Profiling for more complex cases • Gives a better understanding of complex business structures • Expensive and needs trained staff

12. Common Problems • Different definitions and classifications • Administrative and statistical priorities are often different • Conversion matrices needed for different classifications • Timeliness • Data arrive too late • Data relate to a different time period

13. VAT Birth Lags

14. VAT Birth Lags • 2/3 of businesses are on the register within 2 months of start-up • Mean lag = 4 months due to “outliers” • Median = Approx. 40 days • Some pre-register - negative lags

15. Common Problems • Change management • Risk of changes in government policy, thresholds, definitions, coverage etc. • Need contingency plans • Data from multiple sources • Matching / linking issues • Data conflicts – priority rules

16. Quality of Administrative Data • There are many aspects to quality • Administrative data will be better than survey data in some aspects but not in others • It is important to look at overall quality • Do the data meet the needs of users?

17. Three Aspects of Quality • Quality of incoming data • Quality of processing(matching, merging, ...) • Quality of outputs - likely to be different to survey based outputs, but are they better?

18. Quality Measurement • How to measure the quality of data from administrative sources? • Comparing sources • Quality check surveys • Knowledge of source (metadata) • Quality reports / templates

19. Quality Templates

20. Using Administrative Data • Conversion to statistical concepts and definitions • Linking / Matching • Exact Matching - linking records from two or more sources, often using common identifiers • Probabilistic Matching - determining the probability that records from different sources should match, using a combination of variables

21. UK Business Register

23. Satellite Registers

24. Examples of Satellite Registers • Tourism - hotel register (category, number of beds) • Transport - vehicle or ship register (type, capacity) • Distributive trades - buildings register (building size, sales area)

25. Conclusions • Administrative sources should be defined in the widest sense • There are many benefits in using administrative data, particularly reduced costs • There are problems when using administrative data, but usually someone has found a solution

26. Conclusions • Most problems can be reduced by effective planning and detailed knowledge of the source • The benefits are often greater than the costs

27. Thank-you for listening. Any Questions? steve.vale@ons.gov.uk