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Attendees CSO: Richard McMahon (Chairperson), Brian Costello, Keith McSweeney, Barra Casey (Secretary).
Attendees (CSO users): Michael Collins, Elish Kelly (ESRI), Conor O’Toole (ESRI), Stefanie Haller (UCD), Gerard Kiely (ISME).
Apologies: Debbie Quinn (Forfas), Adrian O’Donoghue (BMW Regional Assembly), Gerard Monks (DETI), Jonathan Healy (Forfas), Siobhan Bradley (Chambers Ireland), Geraldine Anderson (IBEC), Avine McNally (SFA).
The Chairperson welcomed the new members to the liaison group and outlined the terms of reference under which it was originally designed. It was stressed that the liaison group is an important way for the CSO to get feedback from their users in relation to enterprise statistics.
One of the important aspects for the group is transparency which is why the membership, the terms of reference and the minutes for all meetings are documented on the CSO website. The Chairperson particularly welcomed Michael Collins who is a user of CSO statistics and became aware of the existence of this group online. He was subsequently invited to the meeting today to present his views and requirements in relation to statistical outputs.
Generally one meeting of the liaison group is held every year however the members of the group are contacted by email from time to time during the year in order to consult on important issues in business statistics.
At last years meeting, CSO representatives from the areas of Trade and National Accounts spoke to the group. There have been developments in this area over the last twelve months with work ongoing between Trade and Business Statistics to link the trade activity to the enterprise unit. It is expected that a release will be published in this regard during the first half of 2013.
It was felt at last years meeting that there were too many presentations and not enough time for discussion. Therefore, the number of presentations has been reduced this year with more time on the agenda for discussion.
The minutes from the last meeting were approved without amendment.
A new survey was initiated during 2012 which attempted to capture the global value chains of Irish resident enterprises. This was a follow up of the International Sourcing survey which was carried out in 2007; however, there was a greater level of detail requested from respondents on their international activities. The questionnaire was developed at EU level and then adapted at the CSO for national purposes. To ensure that our users had an input into the content of the questionnaire, it was circulated to the liaison group and feedback requested. Some important points were received from the members of the group. Results from the International Sourcing Survey 2012 will be published during 2013.
In order to reduce costs and increase efficiency in the production of statistics, there was an attempt at EU level to identify areas that had a negative priority. One of these areas was the New Orders Book in Industry which was abolished as an EU legal requirement. The reason for the requirement being abolished was that New Orders in Industry were no longer a reliable leading indicator for production in the sector. For national purposes, the CSO consulted with the liaison group to ascertain whether or not there was a continued requirement for these statistics in Ireland. The outcome of this consultation was that CSO users did not see a continued need for the data.
The third consultation with the liaison group during 2012 was in relation to the new framework legal document that is being developed at Eurostat. This is called the Framework Regulation for Integrating Business Statistics (FRIBS). The objective of this document is to bring together the various EU Regulations that cover business statistics and introduce more consistency, clarity and simplicity in terms of the requirements. The document also gives more emphasis to the services sector.
Michael Collins is an accountant who takes an interest in economic data published not only by the CSO but by other public and private bodies. He presented his proposed two-page Economic Snapshot which he has developed. His rational for developing the Snapshot was that many statistical or economic reports were too long and inaccessible.
The Economic Snapshot is designed in such a way so as to simplify the dissemination of complex economic data and dispel public misconceptions. The Economic Snapshot includes key indicators under the headings of 1) Economy, 2) Employment, 3) Public Finances, 4) Balance Sheet – Ireland and 5) Banking.
Brian Costello works in the CSO Dissemination and Multi-theme Reporting Division. He presented the dissemination strategy of the CSO to the members of the liaison group.
The dissemination strategy of the CSO is centred on the CSO website (www.cso.ie) but also included the website of the National Statistics Board (www.nsb.ie) and StatCentral.
He highlighted the usefulness of StatBank (CSO’s main dissemination database) as a tool for disseminating statistics. One of these has been the work undertaken with the Digital Enterprise Research Institute (DERI) where data from StatBank has been linked to make it more useable and accessible. CSO are also working with Google and their public data explorer (http://www.google.ie/publicdata/directory). This project is still ongoing and has been successful to a certain extent to date.
StatBank has also been used to produce the CSO’s key economic indicators (http://www.cso.ie/indicators/Maintable.aspx). This is a new development that may in fact go some way to meeting the needs outlined by Michael Collins with his Economic Snapshot report. The key indicators are automatically updated from StatBank therefore are an efficient way to disseminate statistics.
One of the major developments over the last year has been move away from pdf releases/publications and towards webpage releases/publications. These developments are being implemented for the first time this month. A link was circulated to the members of the liaison group giving an example of one of the new releases. One of the advantages of webpage releases is the ability to view the content using smartphones and tablets.
In relation to StatBank, the data can be downloaded using various formats. Brian posed a question to the members of the group on whether there were other file types that we are not currently catering for.
Brian also outlined the use the CSO make of RSS feeds and the increasing important of the CSO Twitter account.
Barra Casey presented on new CSO enterprise statistics that have been developed over the last year. The Business in Ireland report is the new flagship publication for structural business statistics. The 2009 report was published January 2012 and the 2010 report was published during November 2012. It gives an overview of the entire business economy and aims to improve the accessibility of the data published on a sectoral basis on the CSO website. Possible improvements for next year include including a chapter on short term business indicators, a chapter on trade data and improving the international comparisons. Barra was particularly keen to get feedback from the liaison group on further themes or ideas for the report.
The CSO have also recently published Foreign Affiliates Statistics (FATS). These data look at the activities abroad of the affiliates of Irish multinationals and the domestic activities of the affiliates of foreign multinationals. A special article has been published in Business in Ireland 2010 outlining the methodology used to produce these data.
The CSO are also developing a monthly index of production in services. This indicator came from both external and internal requirements. The aim of this short term indicator is to produce an index of gross value added at constant prices. Currently, the published indicator measures gross value added at current prices due to the difficulties in deflating the production of services. The CSO are developing the deflation methodology for the index.
Barra also mentioned that the Response Burden Barometer (RBB) produced by the CSO has fallen by 19% between 2005 and 2011. The main reasons why this barometer fell over this period were efficient sampling, discontinuing the National Employment Survey (NES), reduction in time taken to complete the Earnings Hours Employment Costs Survey (EHECS) returns and increased us of administrative data in the Census of Industrial Production (CIP).
During the course of the meeting, the Director General of CSO (Padraig Dalton) and the outgoing Director of Business Statistics (Steve MacFeely) joined the discussion.
The Director General outlined the importance he places on the work of the liaison group and stressed that the CSO are actively seeking feedback from their users. This feedback will be an important factor in the development of a new strategy for the CSO which will be published in early 2013.
The outgoing Director of Business Statistics thanked the liaison group for their work and hoped the work of the group would have an impact on the future direction of business statistics at the CSO.
The general discussion centred on the three presentations given during the meeting.
Economic Snapshot:
CSO was supportive of the Economic Snapshot presented by Michael Collins and felt the concept was very good. However, a report such as this should contain some commentary to explain the origin and background to the data and the type of indicators used should be neutral in terms of the message being portrayed. It was felt that a statistical organisation should present the data in a report such as this as factually as possible and leave the analysts to decide on how the data is used.
There was general support for having summary information such as this on the country in one place. However, we need to be cautious in taking too much of an accountant's approach to the report. Some of the economic concepts do not readily compare to accounting concepts.
In relation to the Economic Snapshot, there was a discussion around how the balance sheet of a country might be calculated or presented. The problems highlighted were in relation to the valuation of property and land.
It was suggested that the Economic Snapshot be circulated to the members of the liaison group by email and comments sought.
Dissemination of CSO statistics
There was support for the new dissemination strategy of the CSO i.e. electronic releases on webpages. The question was raised about whether it was possible to print the release from the website.
CSO responded by saying that the investment to date has gone into the development of the online releases/publications and not producing a printable version. CSO would however take this feedback on board and look into the possibilities in the future.
It was felt that the discussion around the paper versus the website releases was a generational issue and that it would take time before paper was not required any longer.
It was thought that the new key indicators presented by CSO were not widely known and it was suggested that CSO could undertake more publicity to bring them to the fore.
New CSO enterprise statistics
The development of the Business in Ireland report was generally welcomed. However, the question was raised about whether the timeliness of the report could be improved.
CSO responded by saying that the timeliness of the report could be improved over time but only by a couple of months. The reason that the data takes such a long time to compile is due the detailed nature of the data being requested from respondents. The CSO are asking for the full accounts of enterprises which very often cannot be completed until financial returns for the Revenue Commissioners and Company Registration Office (CRO) are completed. The CSO surveys therefore are not finalised until between 14 and 16 months after the reference period. The CSO also rely heavily on data from the Revenue Commissioners to impute missing data and gross the results to the population. These files are delivered about 15 months after the reference period.
An area not covered by the Business in Ireland report was the financial structure of enterprises and how enterprises were funding themselves. It would be instructive to link the financial structure and the performance of enterprises. The question was raised about the possibility of adding such questions to the structural questionnaires.
CSO responded by saying that they are currently finalising the structural business questionnaires for the 2012 reference year. It was suggested that an outline of the business case for including new questions on the questionnaires should be sent to the CSO.
The issue was raised about the National Employment Survey (NES) being discontinued. It was noted that Ireland is one of the few countries in Europe that does not have time series earnings data. The question was raised about the possibility of adding some questions to the structural business surveys that were previously included on the NES.
CSO responded by saying that he expected the NES would be re-run every number of years and suggested that the data for the intervening years be estimated using other indicators from for example the Earnings Hours and Employment Costs Survey (EHECS).
Finally, the question was raised about the availability of data on the exports of services. CSO suggested that the Monthly Services Index may be useful for this if you focus on the export intensive sectors. Also a more detailed sectoral breakdown will be available in 2013 as the methodology around the Index is enhanced. CSO also suggested that a representative from the Trade or National Accounts areas attend the next meeting in order to answer questions such as these more fully.
Closing the meeting
The meeting closed with the Chairperson thanking the members of the group for their continued cooperation and for taking the time to provide valuable feedback to the CSO on their statistical outputs.