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The FTS European quality framework

Adding value to foreign trade statistics: recent developments in Italy’s long-term investment in quality. 1st MEETING OF THE WORKING PARTY ON INTERNATIONAL TRADE IN GOODS AND TRADE IN SERVICES STATISTICS - WPTGS OECD Conference Centre Paris, 22-24 September 2008 Paola Anitori ISTAT.

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The FTS European quality framework

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  1. Adding value to foreign trade statistics: recent developments in Italy’s long-term investment in quality 1st MEETING OF THE WORKING PARTY ON INTERNATIONAL TRADE IN GOODS AND TRADE IN SERVICES STATISTICS - WPTGS OECD Conference Centre Paris, 22-24 September 2008 Paola Anitori ISTAT

  2. The FTS European quality framework Within EU quality is not a new concept Since 1993 the Intrastat legislation asks MS to monitor the quality of the production process. (In a near future extended to Extrastat) The aim is to ensure effectiveness and credibility to EU official statistics tools to harmonise national practices

  3. What is quality.. • a vector of variables monitoring steps of the production process and their “goodness” by some measurable indicators Accuracy , Coherence , Comparability, Completeness data production Accessibility, Clarity data dissemination Timeliness The Regulation asks MS for an Annual Quality Report

  4. The Annual Report: examples of quality indicators (1)

  5. The National FTS Quality programme The EU quality frame: a “superstructure” for National quality programmes In Italy it helped improvements in the national FTS quality frame The Annual Report soon part of SIQUAL, the web data bank collecting information and quality indicators on the NSI statistical surveys

  6. Why investing in quality is so important? Quality is becoming the metric by which the transparency and reliability of official statistics are measured Users and stakeholders are getting more demanding as they get more acknowledged. An indirect role in some NSI choices

  7. A long-term investment Resources often distracted from other activities (budget, staff, IT endowments etc.) Time to build a consistent quality frame Communication channel with users where staff, time and budget constraints are often the rule Improvements seem to happen “when it is possible”

  8. Italy’s advances in FTS Data production Data dissemination In the last two years: • Trade indices • Raw data correction • Data and Metadata availability Relevance Accuracy Accessibility

  9. Why these issues? • Changes of the Regulations (impact on data accuracy) • Hard staff reduction (workloads) • IT growing endowments (new possibilities) • Users’ needs and requests (data relevance) • Deep self-assessment of current methods “quality group” (public+private institutions) ISTAT Internal users (NA, SBS,PPI) Self-input input Quality improvements Discussion: Data bank Seminars input

  10. Raw data correction Raw data from Customs – too-high and too-low values: New statistical method: • New Edit parameters (based on “suspicious function”) • Acceptance interval (based on quartiles) to avoid useless checks • Staff reduction • More accuracy needed • New IT endowments Parameters estimated at “CN8-flow” Acceptance interval checked by staff Method applied to Extrastat monthly raw data

  11. Raw data correction: results Further checks confirmed that transactions outside the old interval were false outliers

  12. Trade indices (unit value and volume indices) New method: Outlier detection at “CN8-country-flow” level (based on AFM method) to improve elementary indices accuracy Trimmed means at “CPA-reduced geogr. breakdown-flow” to improve relevance of aggregated indices • Wide debate on the relevance of trade indices(price Vs. trade statisticians) • NA will use UVIs(import prices not available for years to come) • Interest of trade analysts in maintaining UVI(PPX and UVI are complementary not antagonist) • Change in the Intrastat regulation (new measure for quantities)

  13. Trade indices: main results Volume indexes % change more in line with signals from other indicators

  14. Trade indices: main results Terms of trade of old and new UVIs. Years 2000-2007

  15. Data dissemination Main dissemination tool: FTS Web data bank (COEWEB) • free downloads • wide range of standardised and customised tables • special section for metadata (classifications, methods etc.) New tables: • The “made in Italy” sectors • Back-casting from 1970 according to NACE Section Enrichment: • Methodological docs • Manuals • Dynamic notes to recall methodol. advancements

  16. Data dissemination: users’ appreciation • Downloadstripledfrom 2004 (1 mln in 2007) • Metadata users reached13,7% of downloads in 2007 • +14,7% of Public Institutions from 2004 to 2007 • Standard tables from 50.000 to 350.000 (2001-2007) • From 2008 users’ requests filtered by a contact centre to feed a parallel information system for quality purposes

  17. Data dissemination: an overview

  18. Conclusions A quality programme implies time, staff and budget commitments It takes time/burden to be structured Improvements are often achieved “when possible” We judge it worthy in terms of return from users (credibility and transparency of official statistics)

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