Adding value to foreign trade statistics:
recent developments in Italy’s long-term
investment in quality
1st MEETING OF THE WORKING PARTY ON INTERNATIONAL TRADE IN
GOODS AND TRADE IN SERVICES STATISTICS - WPTGS
OECD Conference Centre
Paris, 22-24 September 2008
Paola Anitori
ISTAT
The FTS European quality framework
Within EU quality is not a new concept
Since 1993 the Intrastat legislation asks MS
to monitor the quality of the production process.
(In a near future extended to Extrastat)
The aim is to ensure effectiveness and credibility to EU
official statistics
tools to harmonise national practices
What is quality..
a vector of variables monitoring steps of the
production process and their “goodness” by some
measurable indicators

Accuracy , Coherence ,
Comparability, Completeness
Accessibility, Clarity
Timeliness
data production
data dissemination
The Regulation asks MS for an Annual Quality Report
The Annual Report: examples of quality
indicators
Aspects of
Quality
Variables
Thresholds
Exemption thresholds
Non-response
Accuracy Methods of
adjustment
Statistical value
Revisions
Indicators
values in euros
% share of total trade value
% share of total trade value
Description of the method
Values of total adjustment in euros
Description of the method
% share of revision on total trade value
(1)
Proposed
Breakdown
by flow
by flow
by flow
by flow
The National FTS Quality programme
The EU quality frame: a “superstructure” for National
quality programmes
In Italy it helped improvements
in the national FTS quality frame
The Annual Report soon part of SIQUAL,
the web data bank collecting information and quality
indicators on the NSI statistical surveys
Why investing in quality is so important?
Quality is becoming the metric by which the
transparency and reliability of official
statistics are measured
Users and stakeholders are getting
more demanding as they get more
acknowledged.
An indirect role in some NSI choices
A long-term investment
Resources often distracted from other activities
(budget, staff, IT endowments etc.)
Time to build a consistent quality frame
Communication channel with users
where staff, time and budget constraints are
often the rule
Improvements seem to happen
“when it is possible”
Italy’s advances in FTS
In the last two years:
Data
production
Data
dissemination
Trade
indices
Relevance
Accuracy
Accessibility
Raw data
correction
Data and
Metadata
availability
Why these issues?
Changes of the Regulations (impact on data accuracy)
Hard staff reduction (workloads)
IT growing endowments (new possibilities)
Users’ needs and requests (data relevance)
Deep self-assessment of current methods
“quality group”
(public+private
institutions)
input
Self-input
ISTAT
Internal users
(NA, SBS,PPI)
input
Quality
improvements
Discussion:
Data bank
Seminars
Raw data correction
Raw data from Customs – too-high and too-low values:



Staff reduction
More accuracy
needed
New IT endowments
New statistical method:
 New Edit parameters
(based on “suspicious
function”)

Acceptance interval
(based on quartiles) to
avoid useless checks
I.
Parameters estimated at “CN8-flow”
II. Acceptance interval checked by staff
III. Method applied to Extrastat monthly raw data
Raw data correction: results
Acceptance intervals
Suspicious observations
Imports
Exports
Number % on total Number % on total
New
Old
41,023
72,136
18.6
32.8
82,498
150,873
19.0
34.8
Intersections between old and new
25,867
11.7
49,918
11.5
Further checks confirmed that transactions
outside the old interval were false outliers
Trade indices (unit value and volume indices)

Wide debate on the
relevance of trade
indices (price Vs. trade
statisticians)

NA will use UVIs (import

Interest of trade
analysts in maintaining
UVI (PPX and UVI are
prices not available for
years to come)
complementary not
antagonist)

Change in the Intrastat
regulation (new measure
for quantities)
New method:
Outlier detection at
“CN8-country-flow” level
(based on AFM method)
to improve elementary
indices accuracy
Trimmed means at
“CPA-reduced geogr.
breakdown-flow”
to improve relevance
of aggregated indices
Trade indices: main results
Effect on index calculation
Import
Export
Elementary indexes (a)
--CV % average reduction
--Number of outliers
--% Average loss in terms of values
55.5
20.9
18.1
52.5
20.5
20.7
Aggregated indexes (b)
--% average annual revisions
1.0
1.8
(a) in each domain
(b) new indexes lower than old indexes
Volume indexes % change more in line with
signals from other indicators
Trade indices: main results
Terms of trade of old and new UVIs. Years 2000-2007
1.080
1.060
1.040
1.020
1.000
0.980
0.960
new index
old index
J ul-0
7
7
J an-0
J ul-0
6
6
J an-0
J ul-0
5
5
J an-0
J ul-0
4
4
J an-0
J ul-0
3
3
J an-0
J ul-0
2
2
J an-0
J ul-0
1
1
J an-0
J ul-0
0
J an-0
0
0.940
Data dissemination
Main dissemination tool:
FTS Web data bank (COEWEB)
free downloads

wide range of
standardised and
customised tables
special section for
metadata
(classifications,
methods etc.)




New tables:
The “made in Italy”
sectors
Back-casting from
1970 according to
NACE
Section Enrichment:
Methodological docs
Manuals
Dynamic notes to
recall methodol.
advancements
Data dissemination: users’ appreciation

Downloads tripled from 2004 (1 mln in 2007)

Metadata users reached 13,7% of downloads
in 2007

+14,7% of Public Institutions from 2004 to
2007

Standard tables from 50.000 to 350.000
(2001-2007)

From 2008 users’ requests filtered by a
contact centre to feed a parallel information
system for quality purposes
Data dissemination: an overview
10,3
Methodology and Manuals
Classifications
3,2
Com petitiveness Indicators
5,3
4,3
Tim e series
34,5
Tables (standardised dow nloads)
41,4
Tables (custom dow nloads)
Report and Bullettins
-
1,0
5,0
10,0
15,0
20,0
25,0
30,0
35,0
40,0
45,0
Conclusions
A quality programme implies time, staff and
budget commitments
It takes time/burden to be structured
Improvements are often achieved “when
possible”
We judge it worthy in terms of return from
users (credibility and transparency of
official statistics)