Collaboration and Sharing Statistical Software: Experiences and Aspirations at the Australian Bureau of Statistics

1. Collaboration and Sharing Statistical Software, Components, Processes and Capability - Experiences and Aspirations at the Australian Bureau of Statistics Jenine Borowik – Chief Information Officer, ABS for Meeting on the Management of Statistical Information Systems, Oslo, May 2009

2. Presentation Outline • Getting to 'now' - a brief history of ABS ICT • Drivers for change • Recent collaboration experiences and lessons • Aspirations for future collaboration

3. 1. Getting to 'now' • 1980s+: Evolutionary use of ICT in enabling ABS business • 1990s+: Strong ICT governance and close ICT alignment to business and methodology • 1994+: ABS business invests in ICT via a transparent cost-recovered model • 1995+: Oracle, SAS, IBM Notes-Domino and Superstar dominate technical architecture (with C, Centura, later Blaise and Java and some .Net) • 2004: Greater emphasis on engagement of Australian statistical community: 2004 Allen Report leads to National Statistical Service and National Data Network prototype (with pilot collaborations)‏ • Major re-engineering programs: BSIP 2002-2006, ISHS 2006-2008 • 2006+: Working@ABS program – improvements for personal productivity and collaboration, built on earlier knowledge management achievements • 2008+: Australian government seeks stronger central ICT governance (Gershon Review)‏

4. 1. Getting to 'now': influences • Multiple efficiency demands and innovation needs with declining resources within ABS • Organisational support for strong and strategic ICT capability particularly for statistical infrastructure and a legislative basis for operational independence • Long history of sharing statistical infrastructure with other NSOs (standards, frameworks, techniques, however systems & tools were opportunistically shared) • Observing maturity of international statistical community business infrastructure collaborations, whilst developing ABS capability to productively participate in these

5. 1. We all have end-to-end statistical processing frameworks! e.g. 3 of ABS's ABS-enhanced GSBPM (in progress)‏

6. 1. Working@ABSPersonal Productivity and Collaboration Program • A program to enhance staff productivity through: • improved knowledge management environment, • enhanced multi-access point voice and video integration, • extended personal use of internet and web services, • better remote access options and functionality, • enterprise search, and • staff education through multimedia. • For example: Notes 8, SameTime, CISCO VoIP, Blackberry, VMWare virtual remote PC access via USB device, OmniFind, wiki use, blog trials

7. 2a. Drivers for change: National Statistical Service What is the NSS? The NSS is the community of government agencies, led by the ABS as Australia’s national statistical organisation, building a rich statistical picture for abetter informed Australia.

8. 2a. Drivers for Change: ABS and the NSS In concept, the NSS is: • the sum of an agreed set of statistical frameworks, principles, policies and data resources developed by, or available to, government agencies and instrumentalities within Australia that are used, or could be used, to produce official statistics, together with the skills and capabilities of the people involved; • underpinned by a set of shared values and associated behaviours that shape and sustain the integrity and objectivity of official statistics and provide governments, markets, businesses and communities with confidence to trust, both as providers and users, the official statistics produced within the NSS.

9. 2a. Drivers for Change: ABS and the NSS The objectives of the NSS are to: • deliver a high quality, up-to-date, comprehensive, coherent statistical picture of the economy, society and the environment to assist and encourage informed decision making, research and discussion within governments and the wider community; • provide a world class official statistical service that retains the confidence and trust of the Australian society as both providers to, and users of, the resultant official statistics; • maximise the use for official statistical purposes of data available within government administrative systems by government agencies and instrumentalities; • minimise the burden of statistical reporting at all levels of the Australian community; and • document and retain as an enduring national resource key statistical outputs and their underlying data sources. Shared infrastructure could assist greatly

10. 2b. Drivers for Change: New sources, techniques and dissemination approaches • Increasing expectations of data respondents, information consumers and suppliers for electronic interaction • Government expectation of further efficiencies • Maintaining data quality with shrinking budgets • Evolving the statistics for important areas of government decision-making • Greater demand for system-to-system services through the web • Using existing data for new statistics • Creating hybrid subject-matter outputs (eg socio-economic, enviro-economic)‏ • Replacing purpose-built data collection with more administrative data • Systematising statistical business process knowledge • Incorporating components developed by others (eg geospatial software)‏ • Data linking Too much to do!!!

11. 2c. Drivers for Change: Whole of Government • Standardised business processes, architectures & ICT asset re-use -> leading to consistent eGovernment service provision • More centralised ICT governance, business case development, funding review processes, comparative reporting metrics ('Gershon Review')‏ • Australian National Government Information Sharing Strategy (NGISS)‏ • Establishing the place of statistics in whole of government processes and architecture • NSOs have a national government VALUE PROPOSITION for international collaboration: • we are not competitors • we have some common statistical models and frameworks • we use each others' statistical infrastructure to varying degrees • we could use international collaboration to deliver efficiencies and seek national government investment for our own agencies in doing so

12. 2c. Australian Government Architecture

13. 3. Recent Experience with collaboration‏ • Building a pilot National Data Network for the National Statistical Service • Building a National Children and Youth Statistical Portal • Building the Victorian (Australian state) Government Child and Adolescent Monitoring System • Contributing to the US Bureau of Census Data Ferret business intelligence product • Developing system infrastructure for international Creative Commons digital rights management 'water marking' • Building metadata support systems and eForm infrastructure for the Australian Standard Business Reporting Program • Providing data design and 'public' Web services for the Western Australian (state government) SLIP/Landgate geo-presentation and mapping project • Providing data design and implementation staff to the (Australian) Commonwealth Spatial Data Integration project

14. 3. Recent Collaboration Experiences: Lessons • Need to define and ideally demonstrate a clear business benefit (“value proposition”) to all stakeholders including internal stakeholders • Senior executive 'champions' necessary in all collaborating organisations • Good project management discipline: not a legal agreement but a 'committed' agreement through Memorandum of Understanding • Understand differences between organisations: cultural, technical architecture, governance • A phased delivery model with 'agile' time-boxed delivery very important • Lead agency model does work • A common business framework is a great starting point • Recognise others' legislative issues, intellectual property and risks formally

15. 3. Recent Collaboration Experiences: Lessons • An agreed services and data and metadata interchange framework can overcome differences in technology architecture • There does not have to be only one solution for each part of the statistical business processing model • Technology moves quickly from original design/architecture – be alert! • Strong benefit from out-posting staff to other organisations • Timeframes can be considerably different/longer than internal projects • Overall: • harder than we first envisaged • there was 'pain' but manageable and the benefits can be high • we believe that we need serious, productive collaborations to prosper

16. 4. Aspirations • Our drivers have expanded. We need processes, architecture and software for: • A strong National Statistical System where other agencies also require statistical infrastructure • New data sources, processing techniques and dissemination techniques • Whole of government changes • We are looking for an architecture that: • leverages what is already available; • is compatible with GSBPM and can form part of the Australian Government Architecture; • allows different organisations to "plug in" different components; • adapts to new components and capability as it surfaces (both in the NSO community and the broader environment); • allows cooperative planning for new developments in different organisations; • supports collaboration across the life cycle of components (design, construction, use, enhancement, retirement); and • includes a focus on effective end to end integration of components.

17. 4. Aspirations • Collaboration has the potential to: • Support a faster pace of process and system change • Support easier implementation of statistical frameworks • Pool resources for higher quality and better support • Create joint business cases to governments for strengthening national and international statistics systems • Achieve ICT savings • Build capability • Position us well for the future • Gained practical experience and learnt from others - now considering how to advance

18. Thank you