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2.1 Brief outline by Statisticians
2.2 Workshop on User Needs
2.3 Open Forum
2.4 Meeting conclusion
Joe Treacy, Business Statistics Director, welcomed everybody to the meeting and gave a short synopsis and context for the morning’s program.
Each of the business statisticians from the CSO gave a brief summary of their role in the CSO, what they are responsible for and what impact if any FRIBS will have on their area.
The group was broken up into 3 smaller groups loosely based on three specific interests with a Statistician from the CSO as a facilitator.
1. An overview / main points of the JOBS Group
OECD project
A 4 year rolling project similar to MULTIPROD involving 7 countries looking at R&D, comparing the international differences using the BERD survey. Would the CSO be interested in participating? CSO participation will be considered but there could be a resource issue.
DATA linkage project
There have been a number of requests lately in relation to linking datasets. Worries about data confidentiality versus policy insights from research will have to be considered.
Intercompany debt / payments
To measure payment performance and the extent of bad debts company to company. Credit demand questions RED C survey might be usefully explored also.
2. An Overview / main points of the ENTERPRISES group
CSO data
Would like a RMF files code book metadata file. People are not aware of the level of data the CSO has. The synopsis document should be expanded to add a paragraph and put on the website page. CSO should be at seminars, involved in social media a bit more.
Releases
Put the releases out at different times rather than all at 11 am to ensure more exposure. There could be a Link to CSO release on the Chambers Ireland e-zine to releases. Would like the annual surveys earlier than the current timeline of T+18 months.
3. An overview / main points of the FINANCE Group
User needs:
More breakdown of Irish v FDI data, outside of what is already available in the CSO publication “Business in Ireland”.
More granular data, but need to increase sample size to allow more detailed breakdowns.
Balance sheet questions on CIP and ASI are very important.
Research
A researcher may have access to several micro files but they may not know who to contact for advice. The new one point of contact should benefit these researchers. Researcher access to Revenue admin data is very difficult legally in comparison to CSO data. Introduction of more admin data will reduce researcher access. If the CSO modelled more and surveyed less this would create RMFs with little detail then. The CSO would still need to run surveys to update the models so perhaps these surveys would be useful to researchers. Aggregate level data is dominated by large enterprises, but research interest is often in the SME class so the balance between research and regulatory needs to be managed.
Other comments:
Non response is only a problem if not across the board where it could create bias.
Sharing micro data through SIMSTAT would be a problem.
Productivity
Productivity is not internationally comparable. What is productivity? is it turnover / gva / gva per hour?
Even within CSO there are two measurements from two surveys.
CSO provides gva/person and turnover / person
CSO are looking at what other organisations are doing. Compensation of employment versus GVA is being looked at. Data is sent to Eurostat this must be published / presented better. Even hours are difficult to harmonise - the standard week is often mentioned without any overtime etc.
The group showed great interest in getting a CSO measure of productivity and suggested looking at writing a paper which might help towards resources.
Access to finance Publication
Again this publication was welcomed by the floor and there was a general wish for it to become a regular publication. Its frequency is to be reviewed as well as the questions. Some questions were changed between 2010 and 2014 this reduced comparability. There is a fine line to balance comparability, question change and burden
The group were thanked for their attendance, time and participation in the workshop. The workshop was very informative and provided some great feedback on what users want.
Our list to consider is
Inevitably there will have to be prioritisation which will have to involve weighing up quick wins and resources. All of the above will be considered and will feed into CSO 2020 and modernising Business Statistics.
CSO will revert to the group again in the autumn with our considered response to the above needs.