What IZA is about .

1. IDSCthe Internationa Data Service Center of IZAN. AskitasApril 14-15, 2008ODaF Europe 2008 @ UK Data Archive, Colchester, Essex, UK

2. What IZA is about. The Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) analyzes problems associated with the organization of labor in a rapidly developing, globalized economic environment. Within a framework of seven research areas, IZA focuses on original and internationally competitive research activities in all fields of labor economics. In addition IZA provides policy advice on crucial issues of labor market policy. Permanently employed personnel in areas of research, documentation, and information is supported by external economists within the framework of international joint research activities as well as by doctoral students taking part in the IZA research program. Both international and national research fellows work temporarily at IZA. A close cooperation with the University of Bonn has been established in order to give additional momentum to academic research and teaching.

3. What the IDSC of IZA is about In recent years, there has been a lively discussion in Germany about granting the scientific community access to more detailed microdata. The debate resulted in the establishment of the Kommission zur Verbesserung der informationellen Infrastruktur zwischen Wissenschaft und Statistik: KVI - Commission to improve the informational infrastructure by co-operation of the scientific community and official statistics).
 
Commissioned by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, the KVI recommended a number of improvements of the informational data infrastructure in Germany. The recommendations range from involving data users in the development of collection and processing data to prospects of educational training in statistics and granting the scientific community access to the microdata of official statistics and public data producers. 

Based on the KVI proposals, the following research data centers and data service centers have been established:

 Research data centers 

 Federal Statistical Office Research Data Center 

Research Data Center of the Statutory Pension Insurance

 Federal Employment Agency Research Data Center 

Data service centers
 
German Microdata Lab (GML) at German Social Science Infrastructure Services (GESIS-ZUMA)
 The International Data Service Center at the IZA

4. What has been done so far. • We polled over 700 international fellows on what they think the most important datasets are for labor economics. We then chose the top 20 to begin with. • We collected all available documentation about these datasets: from a variety of sources (internet, data providers, archives, folklor) in a variety of formats/filetypes/proprietary standards (pdf, doc, html, txt, xls, etc) and proceeded to consolidate and unify them under DDI 2.1. In addition we built in a drill down and drill through via a join of DDI and HASSET. • All German Datasets above were for the first time (variable values, variables) translated in English and made available to the world wide research community. • Acted as data broker and mediator between the international research community and German Datasets helping researchers overcome the existing hurdles and get access to data (on site research, remote computing)‏ • Developed JoSuA: a remote computing platform. • Joined the DDI alliance, ODAF etc.

5. JoSuA • Discussions with the RDC of the Federal Employment Service in the Institute for Employment Research, Nuremberg and the Federal Statistical Office (Wiesbaden) regarding the adoption of JoSuA. • Discussions with the Institute for Educational Progress, Berlin Germany (IQB)‏ • JoSuA is operating at IZA • IZA fellow C. Dustmann Univ. College London , UK • Project: Childrens Health and Wage Development • Data Provider (Bavarian Public Health Department)‏ • Nature of Data (Childrens Health Records)‏

6. What are we doing now? • The work so far was partly funded by the German Fed Government (3 years: 2003-2006) and received a very positive review in an evaluation process in 2007. As a result IZA was awarded a follow up funding to continue its IDSC efforts. • Document/Standardize/Translate even more German Datasets (Cost Structure Surveys for Germany, Income Tax Statistics Microdata File etc ). • Strengthen/intensify the cooperation with other German DSC, RDCs, place our efforts in a European scope. • Move to DDI 3.0, retool using various tools for automatic generation of presentation forms from DDI files (Nesstar editor, xslt etc etc)‏ • Streamline the web presentation under metadata.iza.org using various tools such as RSS feeds, blackboard etc. • Getting involved in the DDI 3.0 community via adoption and implementation (workshop on „DDI vs SDMX“ this summer, IASSIST)‏

7. What we are planning for the future • Being on our way to be a standardized data broker between data providers and research (producers and consumers of data) we would like to continue by formalizing this role and getting others on board as well. At the same time we want to join forces with those who are as advanced as we are or more advanced and take on the question of using internet technologies to join all data brokers into a large distributed data broker: search metadata on a well defined distributed metadata “intranet” as a data consumer get your answers from the system and its participating data brokers. • Intensify work to develop tools necessary to unlock “difficult” data in the same way we are serving Childrens medical data from the Bavarian health ministry to a researcher in the UK. We have a well thought out adaptable, scalable, distributable, non invasive technological tool in JoSuA which allows us to aim for the unlocking of real “difficult” data. • Learn about anonymization.

8. N. Askitas IZA IZA, P.O. Box 7240, 53072 Bonn, Germany Phone: +49 (0) 228 - 38 94 -525 Fax: +49 (0) 228 - 38 94 510 E-mail: nikos@iza.org http://www.iza.org