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General preconditions. Statistical Training Course Use of Administrative Registers in Production of Statistics Warsaw 14 – 17 October 2014 Harald Utne, Statistics Norway harald.utne@ssb.no. Preconditions for use of administrative sources in production of statistics. Legal base
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General preconditions Statistical Training Course Use of Administrative Registers in Production of Statistics Warsaw 14 – 17 October 2014 Harald Utne, Statistics Norway harald.utne@ssb.no
Preconditions for use of administrative sources in production of statistics • Legal base • Public approval • Unified identification system • Comprehensive and reliable register system • Cooperation among authorities
Legal base • National legislation should reflect the idea of re-use of administrative data for statistical purposes • Legislation should be up-to-date • Statistics Act of Norway from 1989 • Replacing the former act of 1907 • Legislation must give the NSI • Access to administrative data on a unit level, including identification information • Right to link data from different administrative sources • Legislation on data protection • In Norway: Principle of “One way traffic” Administrative data for statistical purposes Statistical data for • Statistical purposes • Research purposes (regulated by Statistics Act) • Never for administrative purposes
Public approval • Broad public approval is very important • Influence on political decisions (legal base) • Attitudes may be different between countries concerning • Existence and linking of administrative registers in general • Linking of register data for statistical purposes: • Lack of privacy: NSI knows “everything” about “everybody” (Big Brother) or • Data security better taken care of in centralized system • Citizens may be reluctant to report data to the NSI if they know that the same data have already been collected for administrative purposes • Common Nordic experiences • Work of register authorities (and NSIs) should be open and transparent • Open discussion and public debate
Unified identification system • Unique identification numbers for basic units • Persons, enterprises and establishments, numerical addresses • Unique ID-numbers not absolutely necessary, but indeed very valuable • Matching is possible without unique numbers, but more difficult and time consuming
Comprehensive and reliable register system • Quality in administrative data important for individual’s rights and duties • Registers used by many authorities (incl. NSI) have best quality • Information items that are important for administrative authorities, have the best quality • But: “Administrative” quality is not always the same as “statistical” quality
Cooperation among authorities Between different administrative authorities (registers owners) Between NSI and the registers owners • Cooperation at all levels of the organisations • Norway: National forum of register owners and users • The NSI needs a lot of information about the registers • Regulations and practices in register keeping • Contents • Register owners must inform the NSI about all kind of changes • In Norway regulated in the Statistics Act • The NSI should inform the register owners about quality problems • But normally not on an individual level (one way traffic)
Requirements to data from administrative sourcesAdditional requirementsfor producing high quality register-based statistics
Units and identifiers Definition of units • No problem for natural units (for example persons) • Other units: Must be defined by very precise rules (for example business units) • New enterprise established or major changes in existing enterprise? Unique identifiers • Identifying codes should not be changed during the lifetime of a unit • Example: Norwegian personal ID (from CPR) • Contain date of birth and sex: Changes in ID number may occur • Temporary ID-number changed to permanent ID-number • Good solution: Establishes links when ID-number is changed • Statistical, personal ID (no information) • Best solution: Using ID codes containing no information in the administrative register
Time references and data on events • Important to have dates of changes and events • Real point in time when possible: Births, deaths • Sometimes gradual changes: Industry of an enterprise • Dates of actual changes and dates of registration • Distinguish real events from corrections in registers