STATISTICAL BUSINESS REGISTERS AS BACKBONE FOR BUSINESS STATISTICS

1. STATISTICAL BUSINESS REGISTERS AS BACKBONE FOR BUSINESS STATISTICS Joint UNECE/OECD/EurostatBusiness Registers expert meeting 14-15 September 2011, OECD, Paris, France Clemens Schröter Eurostat

2. Business Registers as guardians of statistical units Recommandations: • Statistical business registers shall become the place in the NSI where the statistical units are maintained and produced for all business related statistics. • Statistical compilers shall only refer to those units which are maintained in the statistical business registers. • Statistical compilers shall apply the units in the register without any further modifications.

3. The Enterprise: the core statistical unit in the business register The global worldwide structures of enterprise groups have an impact on deriving national 'autonomous' enterprise units from the observable legal units. Recommendations • High quality data on 'enterprise groups‘ in the business registers are essential • Include ‘profiled’ units • Exchange micro register data with other countries (e.g. EGR) • Ensure that the enterprise units is accepted by statistical compilers and the collection of statistical data is ensured accordingly • Liaise with national accounts in order to keep the 'enterprise unit' and 'institutional unit' for the corporate sector identical

4. The local kind of activity unit and the business register ? The SNA and the ESA request to partitioning enterprise units into more homogenous units as regards their activity and their geographic location • Is it an observable – identifiable and/or reporting unit? • Is it a meaningful unit (a centre of cost, not a centre of profit)? Practice: Derived from ‘Local Unit’ surveys or ‘Enterprise’ surveys Recommendation: The 'local kind of activity' breakdowns of the enterprise units should be recorded and maintained in the Business Registers

5. The Business Register as a vehicle to support the statistical production process • For the preparation of surveys: all business survey populations are drawn from the same register, so their population frames are complete and consistent. • For the coordination of surveys: survey coordination should be strengthened in NSIs and the reference database should be the business register. • For the summing-up of survey results: statistical business registers should allow to complementing/ weighting survey results in order to avoid biased results

6. Business Registers should contain • Up-to date information on units and their characteristics - including time stamps and source code: Live Register • Population frames on statistical units - for particular reference periods used by several statistical compilers

7. From initial to final population frame

8. Client oriented data quality management • Ongoing review of user requirements • Close relations with any surveys coordination units • Helpdesk for statistical compilers Tools for users: • Service to identify units in the Business Register • Interface allowing to consult and propose updates in the business register • Interface which interacts with the business register for designing, coordinating and the summing up of surveys

9. Access / exchange of business register data • Exchange with other national statistical authoritiesRecommendation: No limitations • Exchange with foreign statistical authoritiesRecommendation: Establish common confidentiality regime by binding agreements (e.g. EGR) • Access to non statistical usersRecommendation: Manage the register in the NSI in such a way that that there is an administrative register domain (exchange possible) and a statistical domain (exchange not possible)