Second MSIS Meeting for International Organizations
(Paris, France, 25 April 2013)
DRAFT REPORT
Participants:
Eurostat: Christine Wirtz, Mr. Artur Queiroz, Ms. Mihaela Vacarasu
ILO: Edgardo Greising
IMF: Gérard Salou, Laurent Meister
OECD: Jonathan Challener, Jens Dossé and Trevor Fletcher
UNECE: Diane Serikoff and Steven Vale
FAO: Yves Jaques
BIS: Massimo Bruschi
1.
The purpose of the meeting was to provide an informal opportunity to share common
concerns and explore possibilities for enhanced cooperation between organizations. The meeting was
chaired by Steven Vale (UNECE).
2.
On the basis of proposals made by interested international organizations, two topics were
discussed:
i) Data collection, including developing SDMX support in common statistical platforms (R, SAS,
SPSS etc.) to facilitate country reporting – led by the ILO
ii) Improving collaboration and the use of open source tools – led by OECD
Session 1: Data collection, including developing SDMX support in common statistical platforms
(R, SAS, SPSS etc.) to facilitate country reporting
3.
Edgardo Greising (ILO) gave a presentation focused on enabling data compilation from
countries using SDMX. The aims would be to improve data collection from our providers, to ensure
good quality and reduce costs. Using electronic data interchange through SDMX is a potential
solution, but this would require software to generate the SDMX data flows, and a time-series database
from which to get the data. a major barrier is that many developing countries do not currently have
such a database. He outlined possible software tools:
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CountryStat (FAO)
.Stat (OECD)
Fusion toolsuite (Metadata Technology Ltd)
SDMX-RI (Eurostat)
SDMX-RI + Dataloader (Istat)
Another solution could be to make SDMX-enabled common reporting tools to compute and
disseminate the indicators from platforms such as Stata. SPSS, R, and SAS.
4.
Points raised during the discussion included:
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CountryStat experience in sub-Saharan Africa – used PC Axis as a basis, but moving away
from this due to problems getting SDMX outputs from PC-Axis.
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Some countries want to run their own servers, but there is increasing interest in cloud
computing and remote hosting, which remove the burden of running hardware and software.
Few developing countries use SDMX, or have the capacity to create it.
DevInfo has software that has an SDMX output aimed at developing countries, but it is
focused on Millennium Development Goal data.
The African Development Bank has an initiative to develop a dissemination platform within
the next one or two years.
The IMF would like to have more machine to machine data collection.
Within the European Statistical System, countries have their own database infrastructures.
Some countries that are not able to produce SDMX use Excel instead. An Excel to SDMX
convertor would be very useful for them.
Getting agreement on the data structure definitions (DSDs) can be much more difficult than
resolving the technical issues for more developed countries, but technology remains a major
issue for many less-developed countries, where even having a reliable electricity supply can
be a problem.
IMF is moving towards a range of collection options, including SDMX and Excel, to facilitate
data supply from countries.
Perhaps different data collection tools could be seen as complementary in a “plug and play”
sense?
5.
In summary, participants agreed that the table presented by the ILO was useful, and should be
verified and extended by all participants, via the UNECE Wiki. It would also be useful to present the
revised table to the SDMX Sponsors. Next steps could include developing a gap analysis and user
scenarios.
Session 2: Improving collaboration and the use of open source tools
6.
Trevor Fletcher (OECD) introduced this topic by observing that collaboration is on the
increase, mainly driven by the activities of the High-Level Group and subsidiary groups such as MSIS
and the Sharing Advisory Board. Further evidence is that the recent Statistical Information Systems
Collaboration Community Workshop attracted 50 participants from 21 organizations. Whilst
collaboration is clearly a good thing, it raises various challenges, including governance and aligning
priorities between organisations. To be effective, collaboration should be based on common standards.
He asked participants to outline their experiences and plans concerning collaboration.
7.
Points raised during the discussion included:
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ILO plans to use the SDMX Data Mapper, and is implementing an SDMX interface.
Microdata software from the World Bank looks interesting, with metadata in DDI format.
FAO has developed a glossary tool based on open source software, extended with plug-ins to
add functionality. This could be seen as a different architectural model to “plug and play”.
IMF has started inserting a clause in contracts with software developers to allow sharing of
the outputs. Gerard will share the wording of such clauses with the group. The IMF also
shares econometric models with other organisations.
Eurostat plans to release the source code of Demetra+, Tau-Argus and several SDMX tools
as open source. Mexico has expressed interest in the EDAMIS data collection application, but
this was not originally designed to be sharable.
OECD share the .stat applications with several other organisations, and is starting to see
benefits from leveraging the capacity for further development in the wider community.
Software is not the main business, so a partnership model is preferable to a supplier /
customer relationship.
UNECE collaboration activities are facilitated by a wiki platform. Open source and free
components are used in the data management system.
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BIS has sponsored the development of some SDMX tools, which have been made available as
open source.
Common user groups for commercial tools (e.g. Prognoz applications) could give
international organisations more bargaining power.
8.
In summary, participants agreed that all collaboration efforts should be seen as good.
Framework tools such as an inventory of who is doing what, and which resources are available for
sharing, would be useful. The software inventory and “Key indicators” on the MSIS Wiki could be a
good starting point.
Summary and next steps
9.
The chair summarized the meeting, drawing the main points from each discussion. All
documents for the meeting will be made public on the MSIS wiki.