Research in official statistics
The European Commission supports a wide range of research projects in various fields of statistics. The research projects currently underway are being carried out by public and private research institutes on behalf of the Statistical Office of the European Communities (EUROSTAT). Twelve research topics are presently being addressed within the framework of the DOSIS (Development of Statistical Information Systems) programme, a framework project following on from the DOSES programme (Third Framework Programme) which ran from 1989-1992. In addition, research projects in the field of official statistics are being financed, under the Fourth RTD Framework Programme, within the framework of a specific programme to be carried out for the European Community, on the one hand by means of direct action (JRC) and on the other by means of activities within the framework of a competitive approach and intended for scientific and technical support to Community policies (SUP-COM). A total of 26 projects were financed under this programme in 1995, 30 in 1996, and a further 20 projects are planned to be financed in 1997 (see RCN 8429). The common objective of these activities is to develop new techniques and technologies to meet the challenges of the millennium. The continuing evolution of the Union through the Single Market and towards Monetary Union has increased the need for statistics and new and better tools to create them. By jointly developing such tools in collaboration with the National Statistical Institutes (NSIs) and the wider academic and scientific communities, issues of relevance and practical usability are addressed from the conception stage. Cooperation between NSIs aims to avoid duplication and conserve limited resources. Considered as being equally important is the need to disseminate results of statistical research as widely as possible. As part of the dissemination process, EUROSTAT has launched a scientific journal, "Research in Official Statistics" (ROS), the first issue of which is due to be published later this year. The journal will highlight ongoing and recently completed work supported by EUROSTAT. It will also include a number of scientific papers contributed by researchers in the field. In addition to the above activities, EUROSTAT organizes a number of scientific seminars which are intended to provide a forum in which new ideas and findings can be discussed and experiences shared. Participation in these seminars is open to anyone, anywhere in the world, and both scientific and programme committees always reflect very international composition. International scientific seminars planned by EUROSTAT for 1998 will include: - "Statistical Data Protection Conference (SDP-98)"; Lisbon, Portugal, 25-27 March 1998: A major concern of EUROSTAT is to stimulate research in Statistical Disclosure Control (SDC). Three International Seminars on Statistical Confidentiality and a European project on SDC have been sponsored by EUROSTAT in the past few years. The main goal of SDP-98 is to consolidate SDC as a statistical/computational research discipline and to promote exchange of experience among practitioners. Validation of the results of the ESPRIT SDC project is also an objective of the conference which will concentrate on the technical aspects of Statistical Disclosure Control. The theoretical stream of the conference is expected to cover: . Statistical aspects of SDC (modelization, security assessment, etc.); . Aspects of SDC (integer programming for data suppression, etc.); . Cryptographic aspects (encrypted data processing, shared control of confidential data, etc.); The application/case studies stream is intended for practitioners to present case studies dealing with: . Protection of data focusing on their degree of aggregation (micro/macrodata); . Protection of data focusing on their nature (business data, agricultural data, social data, etc.); . Protection of data focusing on their medium (off-line data, on-line data or database protection). The computational problems stream is expected to cover: . Existing SDC software; . Missing functionality in SDC software; . Complexity of SDC algorithms; . Rules used to encode national SDC regulations in software. - "R&D in Official Statistics - Academic and Official Statistics Cooperation"; Sinaia, Romania, 16-18 April 1998: This seminar is jointly organized by the Association of Balkan Statisticians (ABS), the Romanian National Commission for Statistics (NCS), EUROSTAT and the International Statistical Institute (ISI). By bringing together academic and official statisticians, the seminar will provide the opportunity for both sides to discuss issues of apparent divergence and look at ways of improving cooperation and bridging the gap which exists. Some of the areas of cooperation will include joint development of statistical methodologies and greater involvement of official statisticians in training programmes for aspiring future statisticians. - "Knowledge Extraction & Symbolic Data Analysis Conference (KESDA-98)"; Luxembourg, 27-28 April 1998: Statistical Offices around the world are creating ever larger and more complex data sets. Summarizing this information is becoming increasingly important. In reducing the data sets and keeping as much of the initial information as possible, one creates even more complex data units, called Symbolic Data Tables, where the cells contain more than one numerical or categorical value. The cells are called Symbolic Objects as they may contain much more complex information such as subsets, intervals, histograms, probability distribution and dependencies. The need therefore arises for an extension to the Standard Data Analysis tools to accommodate Symbolic Data Analysis. The main objective of the conference is to promote new methods in data mining and symbolic data analysis to handle such data. The themes will be new methods of input from complex data sets (e.g. relational data base, symbolic objects etc.) and new methods of output giving a better understanding of the data by showing: regularities, dissimilarities, dependencies, unsuspected rules etc., distillery engine for symbolic data analysis, any extension to standard methods (explanatory data analysis, clustering, factor analysis, decision trees, discrimination, causality, prediction,...) within the context of 'complex data as input' and 'explanatory results as output'. - Seasonal Adjustment Methods Seminar (SAM-98); Bucharest, Romania, 21-23 October 1998: This seminar is intended to provide a forum at which statisticians in the national statistical offices, central banks, academics, researchers and all other interested statisticians will be presented with both traditional and model-based methods and at which these methods will be compared. Some pending theoretical problems in the field (robustness, aggregation, multi-dimensional seasonal adjustment, link between forecasting techniques and seasonal adjustment) will be tackled by practitioners and researchers. Opinions will be sought on the criteria for a good seasonal adjustment and different software for seasonal adjustment and their interface will be presented and assessed. Main themes of the seminar will include: . Progress on the theoretical field; . Evaluation of available software and methods; . Problems associated with seasonal adjustment in public statistics; . Presentation of software for seasonal adjustment; . Training in seasonal adjustment. - New Techniques & Technologies for Statistics (NTTS-98); Napoli, Italy, 25-27 November 1998 (to be confirmed): NTTS-98 will follow the tradition of NTTS-92 and NTTS-95 (both of which were held in Bonn). The aims of the seminar are to explore the possibilities offered by new tools and their impact on statistical theory, on the construction of information systems, on data collection procedures, on the processing of information and on data quality. The conference will provide a forum for decision makers, researchers, official statisticians, national and international organizations and users interested in the programmes of research and development in statistics and in the emerging techniques and technologies. It will encourage discussion of user needs and problems, recent solutions, strategies and political issues. - Exchange of Technology and Know-how (ETK-98); Luxembourg, 7-8 December 1998: This seminar is targeted primarily at producers of statistics, the users, the universities and producers of statistical software packages. It is intended as a forum to bring together the various actors and interested persons in this field to discuss and exchange views on user needs and the existing tools being employed to meet these needs. In addition to these seminars, EUROSTAT actively supports other organizers of scientific seminars within the field of statistics. This support, which is awarded under the DOSIS programme, is in the form of contribution to cost. (It is not available to seminar organizers with profit-making motives.)