PDF version of call for papers (PDF:67KB)
Template for Abstract (PDF:105KB)
Template for Paper (PDF:95KB)

The Wiesbaden Group invites authors and attendees to submit original papers for the various conference sessions for the 25th Meeting of the Wiesbaden Group, 8 - 11 November 2016, in Tokyo, Japan. All attendees are encouraged to participate, as this is a forum for the exchange of views and experiences and the conduct of joint experiments related to the development, maintenance, and use of business registers to support a more integrated approach to structural economic statistics. Abstracts should be between 300 - 500 words in length and the attached template (PDF:105KB) should be used.

Please submit the abstracts to the following email: wiesbaden2016@soumu.go.jp and to the respective session leader.
The deadline for the abstracts is 30 June 2016.
The deadline for the session papers and Power Point presentation's is 9 September 2016.

Session No. 1:
"Country Progress Reports"

Session Leader - TBD, Statistics Bureau of JAPAN

Participants were already asked by e-mail to provide their country progress reports (deadline 30 April 2016).

Session No. 2:
"Role of Business Registers"

Session Leader - Amerigo LIOTTI, Team Leader "Business Registers", Eurostat

The role of Business Registers has already been largely debated. However it is still interesting to follow-up recent developments.

Statistical Business Registers (SBR) are used more and more for other purposes than just maintaining sets of statistical units and providing frames for surveys.

Examples of new roles are the cases in which SBR are directly used as source of information for the production of statistics (e.g. enterprise demography statistics, trade statistics by enterprise characteristics, etc.) and play a strong role in the modernization of statistical production and services.

The work on new SBR roles is boosted, by the demand from policy analysts, from the private competitors challenge and from the exploration of Big Data and web scraping possibilities.

New roles imply also different quality requirements and different methodologies for the creation of SBR frames.

Contributions to this session should highlight in particular:

• Experiences in strengthening and expanding the role of the national SBR
• Experiences in registration of enterprise groups
• Quality and methodological issues when dealing with new SBR roles
• Use of national SBR as unique survey frame for national business statistics
• Compiling international SBR as unique, consistent survey frame for globalization statistics
• National and international initiatives on innovative SBR roles
• Impact on the SBR role of the challenges from policy requirements, from private competitors and from new technologies

Please submit an abstract of your paper to the conference organizer at the email wiesbaden2016@soumu.go.jp and to the session leader by 30 June 2016.

Session No. 3:
"Administrative Data/Agencies/Units"

Session Leader - David TALAN, Chief, Division of Administrative Statistics and Labor Turnover, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)

Business registers are usually dependent on administrative data from sources such as a tax authority. Over the years, the Wiesbaden group has recognized the importance of developing new ideas on how to leverage their own administrative sources while continuing to examine potential new sources that can improve the business register. The main objective of this session is to examine how cooperation with administrative data suppliers can improve the coverage and quality of business registers, including the proper identification of units within the register.

Contributions are invited and encouraged on a range of issues, such as:

• The use of new administrative sources, improvements to existing sources, or joining different data sources.
• The use of new variables from existing sources, and the improvement in frequency of data from administrative sources.
• Modernization of administrative systems that have led to new sources of data or improvements.
• Improvements in matching techniques that have led to improvements in the use of administrative sources.
• Better methods or systems for properly identifying units (i.e., enterprise, firm, or establishment) within the business register.
• Cooperation between statistical agencies and other agencies on the development of the business register.

Please submit an abstract of your paper to the conference organizer at the email wiesbaden2016@soumu.go.jp and to the session leader by 30 June 2016.

Session No. 4:
"Quality and Coverage"

Session Leader - Roland STURM, Head of Section Business Register Developments - Enterprise Groups - Methodology of Statistical Units, Federal Statistical Office Germany - DESTATIS, Germany

Statistical Business Registers (SBR) have a very important role in economic statistics. The quality of statistics produced on the basis of the SBR depends directly on the quality of the register - either because the survey frame is derived from the register or because data that is collected by and stored in the register itself is used for statistical calculations.

In the process of maintenance of an SBR data from several sources is collected, processed, stored and provided to users in the statistical departments of the statistical offices. A sometimes dazzling array of information - taken from existing sources (e.g. administrative data), from SBR surveys, from contributions of survey departments and from commercial providers - has to be transformed and harmonised into a well organised information backbone.

National Statistical Institutes invest a lot in the quality of their SBR - but can users assess this quality and use register data appropriately? Do users of the SBR give feedback about their experiences with SBR quality and do they contribute the additional knowledge they gather from surveys that are based on SBR frames?

Contributions are invited and encouraged that deal with aspects like:

• How does the SBR check the quality of its sources and what measures are applied to provide users of the SBR with indicators on how to use SBR data appropriately?
• What methods and techniques are applied for measuring, improving and assuring SBR data quality and unit coverage in the SBR? This may include the application of editing and imputation of quantitative data (measures of size) as well as categorical data (e.g. industrial classification).
• How are quality and consistency of primary statistics measured and managed by means of the SBR?
• What contributions give survey departments to assist SBR maintenance? Are survey results used for the maintenance of the SBR?

Please submit an abstract of your paper to the conference organizer at the email wiesbaden2016@soumu.go.jp and to the session leader by 30 June 2016.

Session No. 5:
"Technology"

Session Leader - Andrew ALLEN, Head of Business Register Strategy & Outputs, Office for National Statistics, United Kingdom

Business registers are traditionally built on large databases, supplied by multiple administrative data sources. There is rapid evolution in IT technology for data management, storage and sharing. How will these changes impact on registers in future? The use of the enterprise architecture approach, with the development of shared services also creates opportunities to make more efficient register systems. For example, it may be possible to develop shared services that work across address, people, business and other registers.

Technology will also enable business registers and administrative registers interact more efficiently and with higher frequency.

As well as looking at the whole register system, this session also covers any technological developments for registers functions. Some of the core functions such as matching and industry coding require automated systems. How does technology help with other functions, such as register maintenance?

So this session is open to contributions covering everything from the wider use of data warehouses and their relationship with the business register, to specific technological solutions such as for data matching.

Contributions are encouraged on interesting innovations including:

• Integration of the SBR and data warehouses
• Software services/methods for BR maintenance
• Business register data management
• Frame methodology related to mixed mode data collection i.e. administrative and survey methods
• New tools for register type processes, for example new matching tools etc.
• Developments in disseminating register data, such as Application Programming Interfaces APIs
• Use of web based tools for populating business registers

Please submit an abstract of your paper to the conference organizer at the email wiesbaden2016@soumu.go.jp and to the session leader by 30 June 2016.

Session No. 6:
"Business Demography and Data Products from the Business Registers"

Session Leader - Mariarosa LUNATI, Head of Entrepreneurship, Productivity and Microdata Section, Trade and Competitiveness Division Statistics Directorate, OECD

National statistical offices (NSOs) are confronted with increasing demands from governments, international bodies and researchers for business statistics on specific and emerging topics. The statistical business register (SBR) can play a key role in addressing these needs, while moderating data collection costs or response burdens. NSOs can in fact reduce the costs of providing more information through direct use of SBR data. Specifically, the SBR can be a primary source of information on the structure and the demography of the population of enterprises. Also, in combination with other administrative registers or statistical data sources, the SBR can produce additional statistical information to support analysis in several policy areas, from entrepreneurship to business development to globalisation.

Contributions are invited and encouraged on a range of issues, in particular:

• Compilation of business demography statistics from SBR
• Business demographics at the subnational level
• Integration of SBR with administrative data on individuals, to profile the entrepreneurs
• Integration of SBR with data from business surveys on innovation
• Integration of SBR with external trade statistics, to profile enterprises by trade status
• Compilation of business statistics by ownership, e.g. foreign versus domestic

Please submit an abstract of your paper to the conference organizer at the email wiesbaden2016@soumu.go.jp and to the session leader by 30 June 2016.

Session No. 7:
"Globalisation and Profiling"

Session Leader - Pierrette SCHUHL, Department on business registers infrastructure and structural statistics, INSEE, France

Economic globalisation is expanding in industrialised countries. In this context getting relevant measures of the growing role of large and complex multinationals in economic activities poses a number of challenges to statisticians.

To face those challenges business statisticians have to implement new approaches such as business profiling activities that allow them to identify and better understand large and complex multinationals. They also have to develop and upgrade Statistical Business Registers (SBR) accordingly. Indeed, once identified SBR should include new statistical units that are relevant in the context of globalisation such as " enterprise groups " and " enterprises ". Also, better coordination and harmonisation across SBR has to be encouraged. Indeed, interoperability between SBR facilitates data exchange and allow statisticians to get a more relevant and coherent picture of large and complex multinationals.

In this session papers are welcome that present:

• Experience from national and international perspective in business profiling in support of identifying and collecting data on large and complex multinationals ;
• Experience from national perspective on including new units in the national SBR that help to describe large and complex multinationals: problems and possible solutions encountered in particular in maintaining the most significant enterprises on the SBR, and are the statistical units defined to facilitate international comparisons?
• Experience from international perspective on launching initiatives related to SBR that aim at getting more coordinated and coherent statistics on cross-border phenomena : e.g. setting up global SBR, defining harmonised practices to be implemented across SBR to facilitate interoperability.
• National and international initiatives in putting in place identification systems to track complex statistical units at the multinational level.

Please submit an abstract of your paper to the conference organizer at the email wiesbaden2016@soumu.go.jp and to the session leader by 30 June 2016.

Special Session:
"Follow-up of the Guidelines on Statistical Business Registers"

Session Leader - Norbert RAINER, Head of Registers, Classifications and Geoinformation Division, Statistics Austria, Austria

No Call for Papers for this Session.

PDF version of call for papers (PDF:67KB)
Template for Abstract (PDF:105KB)
Template for Paper (PDF:95KB)