Final Report Summary - E-FRAME (European Framework for Measuring Progress)
Executive Summary:
Within the framework of the Work Programme 2011 on Socio-economic Science and Humanities e-Frame project built on the latest political directions of the European Commission, in particular the priorities identified in the Europe 2020 strategy. The project focused on the following general objectives:
•stocktaking of available results and of ongoing research activities on progress measurement;
•fostering a European debate over the issue: opening fora, strengthening ties and enhancing networking among stakeholders;
•defining guidelines for the use of existing indicators, particularly in informing policies;
•proposing a coherent way of delivering information which included review of advanced ICT visualization tools and guidelines for implementation by European National Statistical Institutes;
•identifying new research topics for future investigation paving the way for future European initiatives on “GDP and beyond”;
•harmonising National Statistical Institutes’ initiatives in progress measurement area.
e-Frame aimed at contributing to empower the European debate on “GDP and beyond” taking a broad approach on the theme and looking together at the social, economic and environmental dimensions in measuring human well-being and societal progress at different levels (global, national and local). To this purpose, e-Frame provided a European framework for the debate among all relevant stakeholders. It represented a forum for discussing already achieved results as well as for highlighting existing gaps and needs for further research investments. In this respect, the organization of dissemination events played a major role in e-Frame activities. Specifically, 9 thematic Workshops and two general Conferences were organised during the life-cycle of the project.
e-Frame also responded to the requests and needs of the EC to streamline on-going activities and results on “GDP and beyond” by stocktaking existing results; fostering EU networking; collecting and disseminating best practices, guidelines and recommendations.
e-Frame looked at the use of progress indicators within EU policies and in particular at the Europe 2020 strategy, thus contributing to the setting of future European agendas on “GDP and beyond”. To this aim three Policy documents were prepared by e-Frame project: i) the Convergence report analysing the sustainable development measurement systems with the aim of supporting harmonisation; ii) the Map on Policy Use of Progress Indicators aimed at supporting and enhancing policy use of progress indicators; and iii) the Roadmap for future research needs discussing existing areas for improvement in progress indicator measurement and use in order to move forward the “GDP and beyond” agenda at a European level.
With the ultimate ambition to foster the European position in the “GDP and beyond” debate while interacting at global level, e-Frame established and maintained a European Network on Measuring Progress (e-FrameNET), hosted by Wikiprogress platform (hosted by OECD).
The numerous project tasks were successfully carried by e-Frame Consortium, led by Istat and Statistics Netherlands and composed by 19 partners including four major National Statistical Institutes (Istat, Statistics Netherlands, INSEE and ONS) together with universities, research centres, civil society, and the International Organisation OECD.
All deliverables have been released on e-Frame website (www.eframeproject.eu) and are available on the European Network section at the home page of Wikiprogress platform hosted by OECD (www.wikiprogress.org). Their release has been advertised and disseminated to the European Network Community and beyond.
Project Context and Objectives:
In the last decade, the research on measuring well-being and societal progress beyond the traditional indicator GDP has grown up. The debate on the use of well-being and societal progress indicators to support policy making is at the forefront of the European and global agendas, involving relevant stakeholders ranging from civil society organizations, social entrepreneurs, researchers, practitioners, consumers, workers, citizens up to the society at large.
As a result, the necessity to integrate macro-economic measures, such as GDP, with new indicators reflecting other dimensions such as quality of life and sustainability is nowadays widely recognized also at political level.
Amongst the initiatives that took place in the last decade, particularly relevant in shaping the background of e-Frame project were: the OECD World Forums, the Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress (the Stiglitz-Sen-Fitoussi Commission) set up in 2008 by the then French President Sarkozy and the Sponsorship Group on ‘Measuring Progress, Well-being and Sustainable Development’ set up by the European Statistical System Committee, in 2009.
The e-Frame Project, funded by the European Commission, DG Research and Innovation, under Socio-economic Sciences and Humanities 2011 Programme, built on the latest political directions of the European Commission with a particular attention to the priorities identified in the Europe 2020 strategy. The project Consortium was formed by 19 partners and was co-chaired by Istat and Statistics Netherlands. It was composed by four major European National Statistical Institutes (Istat, Statistics Netherlands, INSEE and ONS) and included European universities, research centres, civil society organizations and the OECD.
The key purpose of e-Frame project was to provide a European framework for the debate over the measure of well-being, societal progress and sustainability among all relevant stakeholders; provide tools and opportunities for a better coordination of activities of relevant stakeholders (NSI, European institutions and policy makers, researchers and civil society) and propose the way forward.
e-Frame had the following general objectives:
1.Stocktaking of available results and of on going research activities on the measurement of well-being and societal progress, including issues of sustainability and social as well as human capital;
2.Fostering a European debate over the issue;
3.Defining guidelines for the use of existing indicators;
4.Proposing a coherent way of “delivering” information (areas of interest, statistical information);
5.Identifying new topics to be put at future research agendas;
6.Harmonising National Statistical Institutes (NSIs) initiatives in progress measurement area
The work plan of the project was organised in such a way to maximise the opportunities for gathering contributions from all relevant European stakeholders interested in the measurement of progress around a core group of National Statistical Institutes. Stocktaking activities, organization of international events and provision of a web 2.0 support for constant interaction formed the “European framework for measuring progress”.
Besides the general objectives, tasks and activities were aimed at achieving the following e-Frame specific results:
1.Collecting and systematizing of recent research results and practices within the measurement of progress and sustainable development and of related specific issues;
2.Opening fora for discussion (workshops, conferences and web platforms) of overarching and sectorial issues concerning the “beyond GDP” debate where researchers and practitioners will present most updated results and where available information will be collected and shared;
3.Feeding results of the debate into other similar efforts, such as international trade and social reporting;
4.Setting up of a EU wide network composed by different relevant stakeholders (universities, research centres, enterprises, trade unions, policy makers, NSIs, civil society organizations) for addressing “beyond GDP” related issues within European policies in a coherent and coordinated way, assessing future research needs and providing original European contributions to the OECD World Forums on Statistics, Knowledge and Policy;
5.Proposing guidelines and actions for the inclusion of stakeholders into indicators’ related deliberative processes;
6.Proposing guidelines for policymakers for the use of existing indicators (with special attention to European policies);
7.Providing an inventory of software for the dissemination of statistics and formulating guidelines for their use by different stakeholders;
8.Collecting NSIs practices on progress measurement and define guidelines for coordinated future actions;
9.Defining operational proposals and a roadmap for FP8 and ESSnet;
10.Spreading the “beyond GDP” debate throughout Europe.
The development of an effective dissemination strategy was a key requirement of e-Frame. To this purpose a proper dissemination plan was conceived which soundly relied on Web 2.0 infrastructures and opportunities centred around the project website representing a major communication and dissemination tool.
Within e-Frame dissemination activities, the organisation of a number of public events played a major role and set the pace for activities. In particular, two general conferences and nine thematic workshops were organised. They allowed discussing and drawing conclusions on key issues related to the broad theme of measuring progress, well-being and sustainability. In particular, the nine thematic workshops aimed at stimulating the debate between members of the project and other target groups on specific issues representing interrelated parts of the complex debate on “beyond GDP” and strived to contribute to effective dissemination of thematic results to targeted audiences.
The Initial Conference of the project was intended as an early event in which to take the opportunity to streamline the project activities, to launch the creation of a European Network of experts on the “beyond GDP” themes which will have its major meeting place in a dedicated section of Wikiprogress.org website. The Initial Conference was also aimed at defining a shared European position in preparation for the 4th OECD World Forum.
The project Final Conference was aimed at presenting in an interrelated way the project outcomes and specific results to a wide audience of European experts and stakeholders, confronting them with relevant initiatives outside the project and getting also feedbacks for the finalisation of the project Policy documents.
Another major project activity concerned the production of a series of stocktaking reports, including recommendations and guidelines. In response to the EC request to streamline ongoing initiatives, research topics and achieved results in the “GDP and beyond” area, e-Frame work plan foresaw a series of stocktaking reports covering the major subjects animating the debate on measuring progress, as described in the following section. The objective of the reporting activity was manifold: i) to describe the state of the art and systematise recent research results and practices; ii) to propose guidelines for improvements in selected topics (e.g. for the inclusion of stakeholders into the deliberative process); iii) to address specific guidelines to NSIs in progress measurement as well as in enhancing the availability of online visualization tools; and iv) to highlight existing gaps and research needs. The stocktaking activity covered several thematic areas animating the on-going debate over the measurement of well-being and societal progress.
Finally, one of the main goals of e-Frame project was to propose the way forward, thus contributing to setting the future European agenda on “GDP and beyond”. To this aim three Policy documents were prepared by e-Frame project, namely: i) the Convergence report which provides an overview of sustainable development measurement systems in the context of the Post-2015 process, focusing on showing the similarities between the measurement systems in order to identify the potential for convergence; ii) the Map on Policy Use of Progress Indicators which provides guidance on the use of well-being indicators in policy and summarizes e-Frame main policy findings; and finally iii) the Roadmap for future research needs which highlights existing gaps and sets out the next steps for moving forward on “GDP and beyond” agenda at a European level.
Project Results:
The work performed and main results achieved during the lifecycle of the project can be summarized in four broad areas: i)Stocktaking reports, catalogues and guidelines; ii) Public events organization; iii) Policy documents and iv) Communication and networking, training events and organisation of internal meetings. For each area, the deliverables are listed following a chronological order. A summary description of each deliverable is also provided intending to highlight the contribution to achieving the project goals.
A. Stocktaking reports, catalogues and guidelines
-Stocktaking report on subjective wellbeing, by the new economics foundation (nef)
-Report on New Measures of International Trade, by Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques (OFCE)
-Report on Footprint Calculation, by Statistics Netherland
-Report on Conceptual framework to measure social progress at the local level and case studies, by The Young Foundation (YOUNG)
-Report on the new alternatives to GDP and associated current macroeconomic indicators “Behind, besides and beyond the GDP: Alternatives to GDP and to macro-indicators” by UNIVPM- Università Politecnica delle Marche
-Stocktaking Report on Social Monitoring and Reporting in Europe by GESIS-Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences
-Survey Template to collect existing practices in National Statistical Institutes on the measurement of well-being; -Report on the Typology of statistical systems for the measurement of progress, well-being and sustainability and -Report on the identification of the specific challenges when measuring progress, well-being and sustainability by INSEE
-Report on Analysis of major practices of citizen consultation reporting analyses of contributions from a questionnaire developed to identify citizen consultation practices in the development of progress measures within the EU and beyond leading to the development of Guidelines of action for stakeholder inclusion and activation of deliberative processes, by ONS
-Catalogue ICT DELIVERING TOOLS: Catalogue of user tools and discussion relating to implementation aimed at identifying and recommending best practices to NSIs in the presentation and visualisation of official statistics on the Internet, by ONS
B. Public events organization
-Workshop on Social capital, by Maastricht University
-e-Frame Initial Conference, Conference on Measuring Well-Being and Fostering the Progress of Societies, Paris 26-28 June 2012, organized by OECD together with Istat, Statistics Netherland and Eurostat
-Workshop on Social Monitoring and Reporting in Europe, by GESIS-Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences,
-Workshop on Intangible Assets, 2-3 May 2013, by ZEW;
-Workshop on Human capital and labour market, 23-24 May 2013, by University of Birmingham;
-Workshop on Measuring Progress at a Local Level, 28-29 May 2013, by UNIPI-University of Pisa;
-Workshop on Methodologies for stakeholder inclusion and public deliberation, 26 June 2013, by ONS;
-Workshop on The Wealth of Nations in a globalising world, 18-19 July 2013, by RUG-University of Groningen;
-Workshop on New National Accounts architecture, 11-12 November 2013,by CFMR;
-Environmental workshop: indicators and missing areas, 5-6 December 2013, FEEM-Fondazione Enrico Mattei and UNISI-Siena University
-e-Frame Final Conference, Amsterdam 10 -11 February 2014, organised by Statistics Netherlands in cooperation with Istat
C. Policy documents
-Stocktaking report of measuring progress and sustainable development, The e-Frame Convergence Report: Taking Stock of the Measurement Systems for Sustainable Development and the Opportunities for Harmonisation, by Statistics Netherland
-Handbook for measuring progress, Map on policy use of progress indicators, by Istat
-A roadmap for future research needs, by Istat
D. Communication and networking, training events and organisation of internal meetings
-Kick-off meeting, Rome 26-27 January 2012, and meeting of the Leading Committee, Rome 26 January 2012, organised by Istat and development of guidelines for Workshops organisation and Stocktaking and for Preparation of reports on Workshop and Conferences, defined by the Leading Committee and prepared by Istat
-e-Frame logo and brochure, delivered by Istat
-e-Frame website, setting up, maintenance and regular updating, by Istat
-Meetings of e-Frame Advisory Board, Paris 26 June 2012 and Rome, 30 April 2014, organised by Istat
-The e-FrameNET, European Network on Measuring Progress, setting up, maintenance, enlargement and coordination by Istat
-Summer School on measurement of well-being and social progress (9-13 September 2013) organized in cooperation between the University of Trier and University of Pisa, co-.sponsored by Eurostat in the framework of the EMOS (European Master on Official Statistics).
-EU Social Monitoring and Reporting Web-Platform developed by GESIS-Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences, allowing to present continuously update social monitoring and reporting information
-Active participation in several conferences presenting e-Frame activities, objectives and outcomes by all Consortium partners, organisation of the exhibition stall of e-Frame project at the 4th OECD World Forum, New Delhi, October 2012, by Istat
-e-Frame Policy briefs: the European Network for Measuring Progress and e-Frame policy documents: moving forward the European debate on GDP and Beyond.
-Report on Communication activities describing activities and collecting documents of the Network by Istat
A. The stocktaking reports, catalogues and guidelines reported the state-of-the-art on the subject, summarised recent research results, flagged good practices and whenever appropriate provided guidelines for implementation and recommendations for further developments.
The Stocktaking report on subjective wellbeing, by the new economics foundation (nef), reviews different approaches to measuring subjective well-being and includes a review of different surveys that include subjective measures around Europe. It ends with a series of recommendations on how to better improve the quality and usefulness of the data.
The Report on New Measures of International Trade, by Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques (OFCE), summarises the recent initiatives to compile a measure of trade in value added to complement standard trade statistics in order to assess trade competitiveness and to understand trade interdependencies between countries.
The Report on Footprint Calculation, by Statistics Netherland, provides an inventory of current academic and official statistics work on the calculation of environmental footprints. It also discusses the use of multiregional input-output databases.
In the Report on Conceptual framework to measure social progress at the local level and case studies, The Young Foundation sets out definitions on local progress and guiding principles to develop a conceptual framework for a common and unifying understanding of social progress at a local level. Specific recommendations are provided on how to respond to the identified challenges.
The Report “Behind, besides and beyond the GDP: Alternatives to GDP and to macro-indicators” by UNIVPM- Università Politecnica delle Marche intends to describe the state of the art in research on alternative measures to GDP and to synthesise the most common indices suggested in recent literature. In particular, the chapter “Besides and beyond GDP” introduces the most relevant attempts of producing measures that go besides and beyond GDP indicators and proposes a taxonomy to categorize these indicators. The report ends with some recommendations on the desirable properties for indicators of well-being.
The Stocktaking Report on Social Monitoring and Reporting in Europe by GESIS-Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences seeks to take stock of major social monitoring and reporting activities existing in Europe at national as well as supranational levels. The activities covered by the report are aimed at regular monitoring of as well as reporting on the living conditions and well-being of the population and their changes over time. It reports on some “good practices” and also presents suggestions for future improvements and research agendas.
In order to contribute to enhancing harmonization of EU NSIs’ practices on “beyond GDP”, an inventory of existing practices was delivered in the Typology of statistical systems for the measurement of progress, well-being and sustainability, by INSEE. It was based on the results of a survey conducted on EU NSIs. EU NSIs are aware that any measures having the ambition to go “beyond GDP” have to take place in an international environment. They should be based on internationally agreed definitions, standards, recommendations and best practices within a common conceptual framework. Therefore, much work has been undertaken at international level. Nevertheless, in addition, many EU Member States have also launched their own initiatives and action plans to go “beyond GDP”. Indeed, countries have also to meet the national demand for statistics for special needs. Moreover, the Rio +20 summit gave a clear signal to countries worldwide that measuring progress with indicators and in particular complementing GDP is a prerequisite for good governance and societal success. The Report on the identification of the specific challenges when measuring progress, well-being and sustainability, also by INSEE, provides an overview of all major challenges ahead EU NSIs when measuring well-being and sustainability.
The report on Analysis of major practices of citizen consultation, by ONS reports the results of a survey aimed at collecting citizen consultation practices in the development of progress measures within the EU and beyond. As a matter of fact, the definition of a set of societal progress indicators needs to face a major challenge in order to be used and applied in decision-making processes. This is granting legitimacy to the tools. The general answer to this is that indicators must be developed with the participation of those who will use and learn from them. This means involving all relevant stakeholders in the framework selected for measuring progress in order to activate deliberative processes at different local levels. To this purpose, the Guidelines of action for stakeholder inclusion and activation of deliberative processes, by ONS, are intended to help organisations concerned with the measurement of progress tailor their approach to stakeholder engagement. They outline considerations, methods and tools for stakeholder engagement, with a particular focus on engagement for the development of indicators for measuring progress.
The Catalogue of user tools and discussion relating to implementation, by ONS identifies and recommends best practices to National Statistics Institutes (NSIs) in the presentation and visualisation of official statistical information on the internet. The report consists of four chapters. The first includes a brief introduction and description of the importance of the project, with a case study that illustrates how good data visualisation can benefit NSIs. The second chapter catalogues the types of data visualisations found across NSIs as a result of a stock take that was carried out. Chapter three reviews the results of the stock take, grouping the tools and technologies into four broad categories and discussing the benefits and drawbacks of each. Case studies are used to demonstrate which tools and technologies are most suitable to different types of NSIs. The report ends with some recommendations on how NSIs can move forward and use data visualisations and interactive graphics to enhance their outputs and engage with a wider audience.
B. The two e-Frame Conferences and the nine thematic workshops have been thought to stimulate the debate on “beyond GDP” themes involving all relevant stakeholders. Policy-makers, NSIs, research centres, academia, practitioners, civil societies, media and the public at large have been the selected target groups of these different dissemination strategies that contributed to strengthen the impact of the project.
The Initial e-Frame Conference on Measuring Well-Being and Fostering the Progress of Societies, took place on 26-28 June 2012 in Paris and was designed to enhance the coherence and direction of the whole e-Frame project and to promote high level exchanges among key stakeholders. The Conference, hosted by OECD, as partner of e-Frame, focused on recent activities in the field of measuring progress and well-being and aimed to fostering the European debate on the wide range of issues related to this agenda. It represented a platform for discussing how best to advance the implementation of the recommendations included in the Final Report of the European Statistical System (ESS) “Sponsorship Group on Measuring Progress, Well-Being and Sustainable Development”, adopted by the ESS Committee in November 2011. The Conference contributed to identify concrete outcomes and initiatives in order to define a EU position into the global agenda of measuring well-being and progress. It acted as a launchpad for defining a European dimension on the topic and reaching a common position in preparation of the 4th OECD that was hold in New Delhi, India on 16-19 October 2012.
The Conference gathered around 270 policy makers, statisticians, academics, and other stakeholders from the European region specifically interested in the field with the purpose to deepen on-going reflection on how to measure well-being and the progress of societies, enhance the relevance of measures and analysis for addressing key policy issues, and lead to concrete outputs, such as establishing frameworks for future co-operation. Organised as a two and a half day event, the Conference presented a thick programme carried on by prominent policy makers, statisticians, economists and analysts. It was structured in three themed sessions-material conditions, quality of life, sustainability-each one divided into an initial plenary session followed by parallel workshops on specific issues and a final plenary session where to report the discussion held in the workshops and to highlight the open issues. Moreover several specific Seminars were organised on topics related to the central theme.
The Conference launched the e-Frame European Network on Measuring Progress (e-FrameNET) hosted by the Wikiprogress platform (OECD) representing an important Web 2.0 tool to enlarge and foster the debate on well-being and societal progress facilitating the involvement of stakeholders and society at large in the e-Frame activities. The Network represents a pillar in the establishment of a European position to foster the debate towards the global frontier of Wikiprogress.org.
The e-Frame nine thematic Workshops were planned to stimulate the debate between members of the project and other external target groups (experts, academia and policy makers) on specific issues representing interrelated parts of the complex debate on “beyond GDP”. They focused on the following topics: social capital; social monitoring and reporting in Europe; intangible assets; human capital and labour market; measuring progress at a local level; stakeholder inclusion and public deliberation; globalization effects; new national accounts architecture; trends and challenges for environmental indicators.
The organisation of each workshop was generally part of a wider activity carried out in the specific work package and envisaged a preliminary activity of stocktaking and a subsequent activity of proceedings preparation. Thus, besides providing an overview of already existing research and activities in the specific field, each event was also supposed to discuss needs for future developments as well as to identify themes and issues to be put at future research and policy agendas. The nine events were thought to provide inputs for the handbook on measuring well-being and guidelines for relevant stakeholders and to contribute to the setting up of the European network of experts and stakeholders in the debate over measuring well-being, progress and sustainable development. The preparation of each event has been an initial form of networking which had its peak in the physical meeting and which continued in the preparation of proceedings addressed to experts, academy, key actors and policy makers. The final products from each workshop are intended to represent reference publications for both insiders and general audience. Highlights of the workshops have been uploaded in the project website, as well as the proceedings.
The Final Conference of e-Frame, targeted to statisticians, policy makers, journalists, academics and representatives from business and civil society, presented the most recent developments and implemented findings, spreading and discussing major projects’ milestones. The Conference was held in Amsterdam on 10-11th February 2014 and was the occasion to assess the progress made in the project, galvanize the “GDP and beyond” network and make an inventory of the steps that need to be taken forward. In order to provide a full breath of the on-going debate on measuring society’s progress, some of the speakers were external to the project and there were also speakers from other FP7 projects. The programme of the e-Frame Final Conference included discussions of the most recent developments in the measurement of “GDP and beyond”: well-being, sustainable development, inequality, globalisation, composite indicators, corporate social responsibility, Post 2015, (web)communication, environmental indicators, measuring progress at local level, stakeholder participation, social monitoring, social and human capital, education initiatives, intangibles, implications for national accounts, and some others. Many of these topics were discussed at previous e-Frame workshops however the Final Conference gave the opportunity to present in an interrelated and comprehensive framework the main outcomes of the project’s activities.
The Conference was the occasion to present overviews of the state-of the art in various subdomains of the “GDP and beyond” area, to stimulate the debate in some crucial topics of this area, to stress the importance of embedding “GDP and beyond” in society and shifting from measurement to policy use, providing policy makers with new measures and tools.
The event provided a lot of interactions on a multitude of topics. The setting up of a system that allowed audience to answer a number of questions prepared by the presenters gave the opportunity to feed the debate and to profile points of strengths and weaknesses of the “beyond GDP” debate and some important open issues. In particular, it was stated that the use of measures for progress in policy making was seldom or never applied in most countries. The audience thought that a dashboard of five headline indicators should be used rather than a single index or a set of indicators. On this issues the EU-Commissioner for the Environmental and a few of the senior policy makers did also stress the importance of single index in communication policy. It emerged the need for the statistical community to conceptualize the way in which progress is measured rather than simply collect data. It was stressed the importance of company involvement pointing out that companies sometimes were more active in corporate social responsibility than some governments. On this side there’s the need for a closer relationship between the statistical community and companies.
Participants agreed on the need for some harmonization of the many initiatives to measure progress. A number of speakers referred to the Conference of European Statisticians (CES) recommendations for Measuring Sustainable Development as an excellent starting point in the discussion on convergence. On this issue the e-Frame Convergence Report provides a stocktaking of presently available progress measures and also defines an agenda for future research. It was highlighted the problem of timeliness of data. While economic data is generally published very soon, social and environmental indicators lag far behind. Participants agreed on the need for a suitable solution if “GDP and beyond” wants to compete with economic reporting.
As stressed during the Conference, a significant goal for “GDP and beyond” is to have impact on policy making, in this context the work done by the FP7 project BRAINPOoL contributed to describe the most important factors in the acceptance of new measures of progress, the barriers experienced and the way to overcome them. e-Frame Map on Policy Use of Progress Indicators contributes to shift emphasis from measurement to policy use of indicators of human well-being and societal progress. The relevance of progress indicators stands in the way they are chosen, it is important that the selection process is supported by a public consultation or by a deliberative dialogue among relevant experts.
Finally, as outlined by some speakers, it should be considered the importance of developing models for assessing social sustainability and institutional sustainability. Moreover, a consistent theme recommended during the Conference is the need for better communication to effectively demonstrate the relevance of the “beyond GDP” agenda and to translate “beyond GDP” indicators into compelling messages for a wider audience. e-Frame Roadmap for future research needs addresses these issues in a comprehensive way with a view on European context and statistical system. To conclude, it was pointed out the need for further work to develop the theoretical foundations for “beyond GDP” narratives.
C. The Policy documents represents major outcomes of e-Frame project. They benefit from all e-Frame activities and deliverables and streamline the project results from different perspectives: analysing the potential for convergence among different European and international frameworks for measuring well-being and sustainable development; supporting policy makers and advisors to policy makers in using progress indicators for informing national and supranational policies; and finally, discussing existing gaps and research areas to be further developed at a European level in order to push forward the measurement and use of progress indicators.
More specifically, the Convergence Report by CBS provides an overview of sustainable development measurement systems in the context of the Post-2015 process, focusing on showing the similarities between the measurement systems in order to identify the potential for convergence.
The number of systems to measure sustainable development have seen exponential growth over the last four decades. Initiatives are not only restricted to the national level, but have also been developed for cities, regions, companies and products. This shows that many stakeholders now recognise that “you cannot manage what you cannot measure”. However, all these measurement systems are using different methodologies and indicators. There is therefore no common “language” for these stakeholders with which to communicate.
The Report argues that a harmonisation of the measurement systems is needed. Several types of convergence are identified: conceptual convergence (of the terms and definition used), horizontal convergence (at a single measurement level such as national, regional, company and product levels) and vertical convergence (convergence between measurement levels).
Given the enormous amount of initiatives, the Convergence Report focuses on the term sustainable development (as opposed to other concepts such as well-being or green growth). The attention for sustainable development has intensified because of the Post-2015 process which aims to create a set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015. Also a number of important harmonisation steps have already been undertaken, such as the Stiglitz Report and the joint work of the UNECE/Eurostat/OECD Conference of European Statisticians (CES) Recommendations for Measuring Sustainable Development.
A new database has been created to compare 12 composite indicators and the indicator systems of 43 countries/institutes. These 55 systems are compared to the CES recommendations framework and the most popular themes and indicators are identified. This is important input for a convergence process.
The Convergence Report ends with a number of recommendations about how to move the convergence agenda forward.
The Map on Policy Use of Progress Indicators by Istat provides guidance on the use of well-being indicators in policy and summarizes e-Frame main policy findings. It covers the topics dealt with by the e-Frame project and it is written in co-operation with project partners under Istat’s editorial coordination. It also benefits from the contributions from European Commission - Joint Research Centre and from the results achieved by EU FP7 BRAINPOol and POINT research projects.
The Map stands at the forefront of the debate: despite a rich literature, progress indicators are not yet part of the political action, expect for limited exceptions. Thus, the Map has the ambition to contribute to the current debate and to further promote policy use of progress indicators. It is moving along the border between methodological issues and policy use. Three different situations emerged: i) for some subject areas the relevant measures are not fully developed yet and some research is still needed to produce the required indicators; ii) for many other subject areas measures are currently produced by official statistics but they are often ignored by policy making and iii) finally, there exist good practices of policy making which already moved “beyond GDP” that are reported as well.
The Map is organised in three main sections, each one preceded by an introduction. The initial chapter “Policy use of progress indicators” provides a general overview of the state-of-the-art on the actual use of “beyond GDP”indicators.
The first section Measuring well-being and societal progress presents the current state of use of progress indicators in a number of specific topics according to the themes dealt with by e-Frame (i.e. Material well-being; Measurement of intangible assets within National Account Frameworks; Subjective well-being; Social capital; Worker welfare and Labour market; Human capital; Sustainable development; Trends and challenges for environmental indicators; World Input-Output Tables: Tracing the Consequences of Globalisation; Social innovation; Corporate Social Responsibility and the Global Reporting Initiative).
The second section Methodologies and tools for measuring well-being and societal progress deals with some relevant cross-cutting topics following project activities (i.e. Indicators legitimacy and stakeholders inclusion; Policies at local level: local indicators and their estimation; European NSIs’ activities “beyond GDP”; Visualisation tools and software; Social Monitoring and Reporting; Advanced training in “beyond GDP”: methodologies, indicators and use; The European Network on Measuring Progress; and Composite indicators).
Finally, the third section Whispering well-being in the ears of the prince: towards an integrated policy framework for better lives describes overall frameworks supporting a well-being centred policy making. It highlights “existing policy frameworks where well-being serves as the integrating lens of policy targets and instruments”.
The Map is intended to be a flexible guide for a policy use of progress indicators. To this aim, it is composed by self-contained chapters allowing users to read only the chapters of interest without being obliged to follow a strict order.
The Roadmap for future research needs by Istat highlights existing gaps and sets out the next steps for moving forward on “GDP and beyond” agenda at a European level. The Roadmap builds on all the activities carried out by e-Frame Consortium: from the stocktaking work to the discussions and results presented in the project Conferences and Workshops as well as in the meetings of the Advisory Board and other International forums participated by e-Frame Consortium. It was intended to be a dynamic tool to be periodically updated, thus three releases were foreseen and delivered during the life cycle of e-Frame project.
The Roadmap responds to the EC’s call to “identify research needs and gaps in relevant information and methods and propose research topics to be addressed at the European level”. Furthermore, it attempts at categorising the research needs in four main areas in order to facilitate the identification of suitable actions and research activities. The four areas are:
• Measurement issues in official statistics. Research topics related to official statistics and in particular to the availability and accessibility of progress indicators are identified and discussed. In fact, official statistics is the main and so far most reliable information source for progress indicators.
• Exploiting non official sources. Gaps and needs that arise when exploiting non-official sources to complement official information on well-being and sustainable development are analysed in this area given that non official data sources (e.g. Big data) are becoming increasingly available and serviceable.
• Communication issues. The need for a more effective and straightforward communication policy in order to further support the use of progress indicators together with GDP in daily life is emphasized. It is vital to reach out to policy makers, their advisors and economic journalists as well as citizens in the “beyond GDP” movement.
• For a policy use of progress indicators. The research topics that need to be addressed for strengthening a policy use of progress indicators are discussed. It is not only a matter of being able to use progress indicators to inform domain specific policies, rather it is necessary to look forward to a wide integrated vision identifying the main drivers of well-being and to assess the overall impact of alternative policy options on people’s life.
The Roadmap ends with some final remarks stressing the necessity to agree on priorities and to set a timetable for future actions at European level in order to put the well-being measurements into concrete, to support policy makers and to gain a wider and wider audience involving the society at large into the “beyond GDP” debate.
D. The Communication and networking activities had a prominent role in e-Frame project and were aimed at spreading project information and results as well as fostering the European debate and position in the global movement on “GDP and beyond”. ISTAT, as project coordinator, was in charge of producing the communication tools to give evidence to the activities of the project and with the aim of communicating its work on going and its results and to involve the stakeholders and the public at large. The main communications tools, developed following the communication guidelines of the EC for SSH projects, were the release of a Brochure and the set up and maintenance of the project website. Besides them, ISTAT and the partners of the Consortium carried out diverse activities to communicate and disseminate the project work plan and its results.
The e-Frame website (www.eframeproject.eu) was released at the beginning of the project. The website, designed to be the main communication tool of the project, has been updated and maintained during the second period as a dynamic and interactive tool aimed not only at disseminating and communicating the project activities but also at becoming a European area of reference for the debate on measuring well-being “beyond GDP”. The website has promoted networking both among participants and with a targeted audience. The website was regularly updated throughout the lifetime of the project and will remain online 5 years after the expiring date of the project.
The first meeting of e-Frame Advisory Board took place in Paris on 26 June 2012 back to back to the project Initial Conference. The Advisory Board represents the high level body in charge of providing advices and guidance for the development of the activities of the project to ensure high quality and excellence to the outputs. It was chaired by Enrico Giovannini, Istat President and by Gosse van der Veen, CBS Director General. It was composed by the following outstanding experts: Sabina Alkire (Oxford University); Bart van Ark (Conference Board Washington/University of Groningen); Anthony Atkinson (Oxford University); Jeroen van den Bergh (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona/ ICREA /VU University Amsterdam); Daniel Daianu (former Romanian Minister of Finance); Hubert Escaith (World Trade Organization); Jean-Paul Fitoussi (OFCE); Jeni Klugman (World Bank); Alan Krueger (Princeton University); Khalid Malik (United Nations Development Programme); Andrea Saltelli (JRC-ISPRA); Joseph Stiglitz (Columbia University).
During the meeting a general overview of the project - illustrating its motivations, objectives and activities - together with presentations of the main achievements reached so far were given by the project leaders.
All the members of the AB reacted with great interest in the project and its work plan and an impressive debate on the themes of the project took place. It was remarked by the AB that the complexity of the work plan and the vastness of the themes would require a strong conceptual and organisational effort by the project coordinator and the Consortium. With regard to the contents of the work plan the following elements were highlighted: the necessity to include the private sector (e.g. Gallup, GRI and SCR initiatives) in the debate in order to enlarge the usual audience; the necessity to educate the market to read new measurements of progress and well-being “beyond GDP” as a chance to catch; the necessity to study indicators of well-being at local, national and global level; the necessity to add knowledge in the stocktaking activity of the project not limiting to portraying existing results but capitalizing them and to highlight the overall sense of the huge amount of work going on; the opportunity to feed the debate to find new ideas and opinion without losing the importance of GDP as an economic measure that as to be integrated (e.g. composite indicators, dashboards) and not to be replaced.
As to the recent international activities, Mr Giovannini stressed the transnational dimension of e-Frame debate asserting that the interaction between the European level and the global context is the approach to follow to go towards the definition of new indicators on measurement of progress and well-being “beyond GDP”. Indicators should be harmonized at the global level in order to compare the growth among the continents beyond nations. Mr Giovannini went on referring to the final resolution of Rio+20 drawing the attention on the global dimension of the topic and the constraint to define the target of the users of the indicators of well-being. Additionally Mr Giovannini highlighted the importance of the forthcoming 4th World Forum of New Delhi emphasising the commitment to define a new policy framework and the crucial importance of the political approach. At a European level, Mr Giovannini reported about the Conference of European Statisticians which was held in June 2012 which delivered a report on sustainable development. He underscored how the great discussion that took place among the participants in the conference to draft the above report witnesses that it’s not fully clear what is the way to follow.
The members of the AB interviewed on the communications given by Mr Giovannini advising that: it is necessary to deepen all the issues related to well-being; e-Frame has to be flexible to follow the changes and the debate within Europe and worldwide; e-Frame has to participate to the main events organised worldwide in order to follows the advances on well-being.
The second meeting of e-Frame Advisory Board took place in Rome on 30 April 2014, in Istat premises. It was chaired by Mr Enrico Giovannini, Professor of Economic Statistics at the Economics and Finance Department of the University of Rome Tor Vergata, former Minister of Labor and Social Policies, Italy, and Mr. Bert Kroese, Statistics Netherlands Deputy Director General.
The meeting was aimed at informing the Advisory Board on the project outcomes and discussing how to progress with the European agenda on “GDP and beyond”. As inputs for discussion, the project leaders gave summary presentations concerning: the key messages from the project Final Conference, an overview of e-Frame outcomes and Policy documents.
In the following round table, the members of the AB expressed in turn their views and provided useful inputs and advice.
At the conclusion of the round table, Mr Enrico Giovannini took the floor drawing some conclusions.
• The need to invest on models was defined of primary importance. A positive reaction is coming from several countries in testing with the new data but a negative aspect is that time series are very short. In this respect different types of modeling and microdata are considered of great importance. It is desirable that statistical offices became the places where the merging of databases could be done and that there should be given the possibility to rely on microdata or analytical tools that talk about behaviours, not only on aggregate figures. In this sense the issue of non-linearity was suggested to be assumed as a norm and the subjective behaviour’s indicators reinforced. In this field the concept of intangibles could provide help.
• The Brundtland Commision “sustainable development” concept was mentioned which involved not only economic, social and environmental levels but also the “institutional” one which has been overlooked but, as Mr Giovannini emphasised, the crises is putting at risk the institutional sustainability also at the European level.
• A huge problem of timeliness still continues. One of the research fields suggested to foster relates to the way to obtain early estimates of progress indicators and a message launched to reach the Commission for future research is a major investment on early estimates of social and environmental data.
• Finally, in order to engage more the policymakers another language should be used, connected with the big conceptual debate taking or to take place because of the current and future crises.
The set-up of a European Network on Measuring Progress - e-FrameNET was carried out. The e-Frame Network was conceived with the aim to foster the European position on “beyond GDP” capitalizing on the debate within the activities of the project. The Network had a dedicated space on Wikipogress platform, hosted by OECD, allowing its members to take part to the debate on “beyond GDP” in a world-wide perspective.
The e-FrameNET was launched at e-Frame Initial Conference. It was set up by Istat with the overarching goal of stating a European position on the measurement of well-being and progress “beyond GDP” and enable interaction at global level through the Wikiprogress platform (hosted by OECD).
The Network’s structure has allowed members to communicate through the e-Frame website and the Wikiprogress platform in order to connect stakeholders, researchers, organisations, citizens and policymakers in the on going debate on what constitutes the most “accurate” measurement of well-being and societal progress. Members of the e-FrameNET were organised in a database, centrally managed by Istat, to respect the privacy rules, which allowed for the creation of mailing lists and for disseminating details about relevant activities.
The position of e-FrameNET on the Wikiprogress platform has represented its key strength driving the European local, national and international debate towards a highly global perspective. It constitutes the European Network, running alongside the Regional Networks of Africa and Latin America. It contributed to discussions at a regional and subject-specific level.
The Network has released Monthly New Alerts and has offered interactivity through on line discussions, blogs, eBriefs, aiming to elevate the visibility of the findings of pertinent projects on “beyond GDP” and impacting over the global debate. It participated in various of the online discussions launched by Wikiprogress on the themes linked to progress and wellbeing (e.g. “Reducing poverty is achievable” -March 2013, “How Should Child Well-Being be Measured?” -June 2013, “How Should Older People’s Well-being be Measured?” -October 2013, “Engaging citizens in well-being and progress statistics” - April 2014,..).
Actually, the Network forms a community around the subject of measuring well-being able to contribute to the definition of “better statistics” produced by the EU NSIs and beyond. Key members include European National Statistical Institutes, civil society organisations, academia and research centres. The members are geographically spread all over Europe and abroad representing twenty-four countries up to date.
The e-FrameNET has become and currently represents a consolidate tool to foster the European position on “GDP and beyond” debate. Its community has given a significant contribution to foster the debate at European and global level. The Network will continue its activity, under Istat’s charge, after the end of the e-Frame project with the aim to representing an increasing critical mass in the “GDP and beyond” movement.
The Summer School on measurement of well-being and social progress was organised by University of Trier (UT) and University of Pisa (UNIPI) in cooperation with Eurostat in view of the establishment of the European Master on Official Statistics (EMOS). It took place from 9 -13 September 2013.
As known, one of the main objectives of the e-Frame project was to spread the debate on “GDP and beyond” throughout Europe and to raise awareness on the topic. In addition, the Stiglitz-Sen-Fitoussi Report highlighted the existence of a large gap between the statistical measurement of socio-economic phenomena and citizens’ perception of the latter. Therefore, it was desirable to improve the understanding of statistical data and indicators of the public. The ultimate goal of this process is to enrich society with better information which could strengthen the functioning of our democracy. The Trier-Pisa Summer School tackled the two mentioned issues, raising awareness of the “GDP and beyond” debate from a contextual point of view as well as increasing the understanding of the required statistics from a methodological perspective.
The Summer School was attended by over 100 master and PhD students, coming from a large variety of different backgrounds including economics, social and political sciences, as well as staff members of statistical institutes and other interested attendees. A total of 19 internationally recognized experts in their respective fields held lectures about nine different sub-topics. These lectures can be portioned into two blocks:
• Block A: i) Overview about “GDP and beyond”; ii) Social indicators; iii) Well-being; iv) Environmental indicators; and v) Moving forward.
• Block B: i) National accounts; ii) Accuracy measurement; iii) Analysis of data and quality; and iv) Measuring progress at local level.
While the first block focused on the main issues with regard to contents to increase understanding of the general topic, the second block concentrated on methodological aspects to provide insights on the statistical background of the theme.
The lectures took place at three places, the University of Trier, the University of Pisa, and Eurostat; they were broadcasted using internet technologies to the remaining other two locations, so that the participants at all three locations were able to actively participate in each lecture. This concept has been used successfully in the BBT (Berlin-Bamberg-Trier) Master of Survey Statistics since 2010. Since this Summer School represented a prototype concept for EMOS, it included Eurostat as a third host of the event. The participation of Eurostat, who also co-sponsored the Summer School, enabled the interaction of university researchers and official statisticians, creating the basis for fruitful cooperation as well as dialogue among participants with different backgrounds. Because of that role, the Summer School set the stage for further European-wide collaborations between universities and NSOs.
Altogether, the Summer School was an enormous success and both major goals were accomplished: with over 100 participants from different fields of expertise and professional background, the “GDP and beyond” agenda was spread widely within the research community, raising public understanding of the statistical implications. The Trier-Pisa Summer School was also pioneering in terms of using state-of-the-art technologies to connect postgraduate students, university researchers, and official statisticians in a Europe-wide workshop. The chance to test and improve interactive broadcasting with student participation was successful. Both the utilized facilities as well as the general concept of the dissemination action should be highly recommended for future initiatives in this field.
Furthermore, it was designed a flyer for advertising the Summer School and developed a dedicated website containing all important information about the course. The announcements of the training course with the programme and the registration forms were published on the website of e-Frame project.
The European Social Monitoring and Reporting Web-Platform (www.gesis.org/social-monitoring-reporting-europe) or portal was created by GESIS as an integrated online source of information on relevant activities in the field of social monitoring and reporting, such as the launch of new social reports or monitoring instruments, new issues of existing publication series as well as recent and forthcoming conferences and other events related to social monitoring and reporting. The web portal – which has been implemented as part of the web presence of GESIS’ Social Indicators Research Centre ZSi (www.gesis.org/social-indicators/) – will be continuously updated and enhanced in the future. It shall provide access to information on the activities itself as well as the institutions behind. The platform also showcases research results and outcomes from various monitoring and reporting activities on social progress, well-being and quality of life and moreover seeks to enhance and facilitate the collaboration between the diverse actors in the field across Europe.
The individual menu items are structured as follows:
• The menu item Monitoring well-being in Europe is meant for giving access to European social monitoring instruments.
• Under the menu item European Social Reporting the web portal provides access to articles and reports addressing issues of social progress, quality of life and well-being in Europe.
• The menu item Conference series «Social Monitoring and Reporting in Europe» provides detailed information – including access to programmes and presentations - on the conference series held at the German-Italian-Centre Villa Vigoni annually since 2006.
• The section Conference Announcements and Recent Events informs about recent conferences and events related to social monitoring and reporting, social indicators research, quality-of-life studies and the measurement of well-being and social progress.
• The item New Releases is considered as a newsticker and informs about new releases of social reports as well as social monitoring initiatives and instruments. The new releases are being made directly accessible via web-links.
Moreover, the web-portal provides online access to an interactive database on currently ca. 230 social monitoring and reporting activities in Europe, which forms another outcome of the stocktaking work carried out by e-Frame project.
Finally, the web platform invites visitors to contribute to the page by reporting relevant news and making suggestions for additional information offers and improvements of the portal.
The web-platform will be continuously updated and improved after the discontinuation of the e-Frame project.
Potential Impact:
Within the framework of the Work Programme 2011 on Socio-economic Science and Humanities, e-Frame project built on the latest political directions of the European Commission, in particular on the three priorities identified in the Europe 2020 strategy (http://ec.europa.eu/eu2020/index_en.htm):
• Smart growth: developing an economy based on knowledge and innovation;
• Sustainable growth: promoting a more resource efficient, greener and more competitive economy;
• Inclusive growth: fostering a high-employment economy delivering social and territorial cohesion.
As stated in the Work Programme 2011 on Socio-economic Science and Humanities, Europe needs to be well prepared to deal with the aftermath of global and regional economic crises and their social implications. To develop and implement appropriate policies, it is important to think out of the box beyond the traditional economic indicators.
All these issues are broadly included within a long-lasting international debate over the measurement of economic performance, development, wellbeing and more generally the progress of societies. Measuring the well-being of individuals and progress of societies, has been a concern of statisticians for some time but, over recent years, the discussion on how to measure progress is gathering momentum worldwide. It involves all levels of policy makers and is attracting increasing media attention.
e-Frame project took into account all relevant aspects of this global debate in order to streamline the activities of relevant stakeholders (NSI, European institutions and policy makers, researchers and civil society) and to propose the way forward. Specifically, it provided a European framework and fora for the debate over the measurement of well-being, progress and sustainable development.
In responding to the EC call, e-Frame largely contributed to enhancing the European dimension by looking at the use of indicators within EU policies (in particular at the Europe 2020 strategy), as well as by proposing guidelines and recommendations for future activities within the European Research Area and the European Statistical System. e-Frame ensured coordination of “beyond GDP” activities putting at the centre of the action the national statisticians so to lead to improved official statistics as suggested by the Call.
e-Frame dissemination activities were organised around the project website and included physical meetings as well as networking initiatives. The organisation of nine thematic workshops and two general Conferences were major e-Frame dissemination events that gathered experts, practioners, Commission representatives, policy makers and stakeholders in general. A key objective of e-Frame was to enhance the networking in order to develop and strengthen ties among relevant stakeholders. To this purpose, a EU Social Monitoring and Reporting Web-Platform was developed allowing to present continuously update social monitoring and reporting information. The e-Frame European Network on Measuring Progress (e-FrameNET), launched in June 2012 during the project Initial Conference, contributed and will contribute after the end of the project, to the “beyond GDP” debate from a European perspective. It stands as one of the important European digital initiatives, sponsored by the European Commission, carried out for sharing information and data.
The Summer School on measurement of well-being and social progress (9-13 September 2013) organized in cooperation between the University of Trier and University of Pisa, contributed to advance training on “GDP and beyond” in Europe. The Summer School represented a prototype concept for EMOS (European Master on Official Statistics), thus it included Eurostat as a third host of the event. The participation of Eurostat, who also co-sponsored the Summer School, enabled the interaction of university researchers and official statisticians, creating the basis for fruitful cooperation as well as dialogue among participants with different backgrounds. Because of that role, the Summer School set the stage for further European-wide collaborations between universities and NSIs.
e-Frame activities also included stocktaking of past, recent and ongoing research in response to the EC request to streamline ongoing initiatives and results. The objective of the reporting activity was manifold: i) to describe the state of the art and systematise recent research results and practices; ii) to propose guidelines for improvements in selected topics (e.g. for the inclusion of stakeholders into the deliberative process); iii) to address specific guidelines to NSIs in progress measurement as well as in enhancing the availability of online visualization tools; and iv) to highlight existing gaps and research needs. As a result, e-Frame delivered comprehensive thematic reports covering the major subjects animating the debate on measuring progress with the aim of fostering the European position.
e-Frame delivered three cross-cutting policy documents streamlining the project findings and paving the way for future activities from different angles. The Convergence Report summarizes the main findings in the measurement of well-being and sustainable development and identifies the potential for convergence in measurement systems in the context of the Post-2015 process. The Map on Policy use of progress indicators aims at supporting a greater use of well-being and sustainable development indicators in policies at the different levels, also taking into account overall frameworks supporting a well-being centred policy making. The Roadmap for future research needs highlights areas that need further investments and developments within the European Statistical System and will contribute to reach the objectives of EU policies and Europe 2020 strategy.
As pointed out by the Roadmap, in order to move forward the European agenda on “GDP and beyond”, there are several important gaps that need to be filled in as well as actions that need to be further developed or implemented.
In many areas, National Statistical Institutes can play a leading role by calculating well-being, societal progress and sustainability indicators that respond to the users’ needs and satisfy high quality requirements such as timeliness, geographical disaggregation and representativeness, comparability over time and accuracy. They could also adequately support the process of integration of official and non-official statistics given the know-how and the expertise gained in setting quality requirements and in developing statistical models for integrating and jointly analysing data from different sources.
Whilst it is no more possible to ignore non official data sources, quality will become more and more a crucial aspect for sorting out data (and data producers) that can be trustfully used in guiding evidence-based policies: data quality will set out the boundaries of public interest and serviceable data separating them from all the others.
In this respect, researchers and analysts in different field (e.g. economic, social and environment) can find an important reference, for their work in developing indicators or using (official and non-official data sources) for their analyses, in the European quality framework and in the methodological expertise gained by NSIs
In reality as available resources are limited, it is vital to join efforts and to coordinate research activities at a European level. The recommendations of the Sponsorship Group (ESS, 2011a) are a notable example of enhancing progress statistics. Partnerships between NSIs, the academia and other relevant actors in the well-being debate could contribute to a large extent to reach faster and sounder results in the above mentioned areas.
Particularly challenging needs described in “Measurement issues in official statistics” and in “For a policy use of progress indicators” paragraphs could be better tackled in partnership, even where some demands explicitly call for a NSIs’ proactive role.
With regard to the area of “Communication issues”, the existing dissemination channels (both official and non-official) can be exploited and complemented by new ones in order to put the progress indicators at the front of the public debate and promote their use by policy makers. In order to increase the use and relevance of “beyond GDP” indicators, it is extremely important to establish a dialogue with the society at large. This can be achieved, among others, by exploiting the potentialities of the web 2.0 and by activating bottom up deliberative processes.
Even though the Roadmap identifies a number of “needs” to be addressed in future research agendas at a European level in order consolidate the availability and the use of progress indicators, it would be recommended, as an initial step, to find a large consensus on setting priorities with regard to the above mentioned needs and to schedule the future actions in the light of the objectives of Horizon 2020.
All deliverables have been released on e-Frame website (www.eframeproject.eu) and are available on the European Network section at the home page of Wikiprogress platform hosted by OECD (www.wikiprogress.org). Their release has been advertised and disseminated to the European Network Community and beyond.
List of Websites:
www.eframeproject.eu
Within the framework of the Work Programme 2011 on Socio-economic Science and Humanities e-Frame project built on the latest political directions of the European Commission, in particular the priorities identified in the Europe 2020 strategy. The project focused on the following general objectives:
•stocktaking of available results and of ongoing research activities on progress measurement;
•fostering a European debate over the issue: opening fora, strengthening ties and enhancing networking among stakeholders;
•defining guidelines for the use of existing indicators, particularly in informing policies;
•proposing a coherent way of delivering information which included review of advanced ICT visualization tools and guidelines for implementation by European National Statistical Institutes;
•identifying new research topics for future investigation paving the way for future European initiatives on “GDP and beyond”;
•harmonising National Statistical Institutes’ initiatives in progress measurement area.
e-Frame aimed at contributing to empower the European debate on “GDP and beyond” taking a broad approach on the theme and looking together at the social, economic and environmental dimensions in measuring human well-being and societal progress at different levels (global, national and local). To this purpose, e-Frame provided a European framework for the debate among all relevant stakeholders. It represented a forum for discussing already achieved results as well as for highlighting existing gaps and needs for further research investments. In this respect, the organization of dissemination events played a major role in e-Frame activities. Specifically, 9 thematic Workshops and two general Conferences were organised during the life-cycle of the project.
e-Frame also responded to the requests and needs of the EC to streamline on-going activities and results on “GDP and beyond” by stocktaking existing results; fostering EU networking; collecting and disseminating best practices, guidelines and recommendations.
e-Frame looked at the use of progress indicators within EU policies and in particular at the Europe 2020 strategy, thus contributing to the setting of future European agendas on “GDP and beyond”. To this aim three Policy documents were prepared by e-Frame project: i) the Convergence report analysing the sustainable development measurement systems with the aim of supporting harmonisation; ii) the Map on Policy Use of Progress Indicators aimed at supporting and enhancing policy use of progress indicators; and iii) the Roadmap for future research needs discussing existing areas for improvement in progress indicator measurement and use in order to move forward the “GDP and beyond” agenda at a European level.
With the ultimate ambition to foster the European position in the “GDP and beyond” debate while interacting at global level, e-Frame established and maintained a European Network on Measuring Progress (e-FrameNET), hosted by Wikiprogress platform (hosted by OECD).
The numerous project tasks were successfully carried by e-Frame Consortium, led by Istat and Statistics Netherlands and composed by 19 partners including four major National Statistical Institutes (Istat, Statistics Netherlands, INSEE and ONS) together with universities, research centres, civil society, and the International Organisation OECD.
All deliverables have been released on e-Frame website (www.eframeproject.eu) and are available on the European Network section at the home page of Wikiprogress platform hosted by OECD (www.wikiprogress.org). Their release has been advertised and disseminated to the European Network Community and beyond.
Project Context and Objectives:
In the last decade, the research on measuring well-being and societal progress beyond the traditional indicator GDP has grown up. The debate on the use of well-being and societal progress indicators to support policy making is at the forefront of the European and global agendas, involving relevant stakeholders ranging from civil society organizations, social entrepreneurs, researchers, practitioners, consumers, workers, citizens up to the society at large.
As a result, the necessity to integrate macro-economic measures, such as GDP, with new indicators reflecting other dimensions such as quality of life and sustainability is nowadays widely recognized also at political level.
Amongst the initiatives that took place in the last decade, particularly relevant in shaping the background of e-Frame project were: the OECD World Forums, the Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress (the Stiglitz-Sen-Fitoussi Commission) set up in 2008 by the then French President Sarkozy and the Sponsorship Group on ‘Measuring Progress, Well-being and Sustainable Development’ set up by the European Statistical System Committee, in 2009.
The e-Frame Project, funded by the European Commission, DG Research and Innovation, under Socio-economic Sciences and Humanities 2011 Programme, built on the latest political directions of the European Commission with a particular attention to the priorities identified in the Europe 2020 strategy. The project Consortium was formed by 19 partners and was co-chaired by Istat and Statistics Netherlands. It was composed by four major European National Statistical Institutes (Istat, Statistics Netherlands, INSEE and ONS) and included European universities, research centres, civil society organizations and the OECD.
The key purpose of e-Frame project was to provide a European framework for the debate over the measure of well-being, societal progress and sustainability among all relevant stakeholders; provide tools and opportunities for a better coordination of activities of relevant stakeholders (NSI, European institutions and policy makers, researchers and civil society) and propose the way forward.
e-Frame had the following general objectives:
1.Stocktaking of available results and of on going research activities on the measurement of well-being and societal progress, including issues of sustainability and social as well as human capital;
2.Fostering a European debate over the issue;
3.Defining guidelines for the use of existing indicators;
4.Proposing a coherent way of “delivering” information (areas of interest, statistical information);
5.Identifying new topics to be put at future research agendas;
6.Harmonising National Statistical Institutes (NSIs) initiatives in progress measurement area
The work plan of the project was organised in such a way to maximise the opportunities for gathering contributions from all relevant European stakeholders interested in the measurement of progress around a core group of National Statistical Institutes. Stocktaking activities, organization of international events and provision of a web 2.0 support for constant interaction formed the “European framework for measuring progress”.
Besides the general objectives, tasks and activities were aimed at achieving the following e-Frame specific results:
1.Collecting and systematizing of recent research results and practices within the measurement of progress and sustainable development and of related specific issues;
2.Opening fora for discussion (workshops, conferences and web platforms) of overarching and sectorial issues concerning the “beyond GDP” debate where researchers and practitioners will present most updated results and where available information will be collected and shared;
3.Feeding results of the debate into other similar efforts, such as international trade and social reporting;
4.Setting up of a EU wide network composed by different relevant stakeholders (universities, research centres, enterprises, trade unions, policy makers, NSIs, civil society organizations) for addressing “beyond GDP” related issues within European policies in a coherent and coordinated way, assessing future research needs and providing original European contributions to the OECD World Forums on Statistics, Knowledge and Policy;
5.Proposing guidelines and actions for the inclusion of stakeholders into indicators’ related deliberative processes;
6.Proposing guidelines for policymakers for the use of existing indicators (with special attention to European policies);
7.Providing an inventory of software for the dissemination of statistics and formulating guidelines for their use by different stakeholders;
8.Collecting NSIs practices on progress measurement and define guidelines for coordinated future actions;
9.Defining operational proposals and a roadmap for FP8 and ESSnet;
10.Spreading the “beyond GDP” debate throughout Europe.
The development of an effective dissemination strategy was a key requirement of e-Frame. To this purpose a proper dissemination plan was conceived which soundly relied on Web 2.0 infrastructures and opportunities centred around the project website representing a major communication and dissemination tool.
Within e-Frame dissemination activities, the organisation of a number of public events played a major role and set the pace for activities. In particular, two general conferences and nine thematic workshops were organised. They allowed discussing and drawing conclusions on key issues related to the broad theme of measuring progress, well-being and sustainability. In particular, the nine thematic workshops aimed at stimulating the debate between members of the project and other target groups on specific issues representing interrelated parts of the complex debate on “beyond GDP” and strived to contribute to effective dissemination of thematic results to targeted audiences.
The Initial Conference of the project was intended as an early event in which to take the opportunity to streamline the project activities, to launch the creation of a European Network of experts on the “beyond GDP” themes which will have its major meeting place in a dedicated section of Wikiprogress.org website. The Initial Conference was also aimed at defining a shared European position in preparation for the 4th OECD World Forum.
The project Final Conference was aimed at presenting in an interrelated way the project outcomes and specific results to a wide audience of European experts and stakeholders, confronting them with relevant initiatives outside the project and getting also feedbacks for the finalisation of the project Policy documents.
Another major project activity concerned the production of a series of stocktaking reports, including recommendations and guidelines. In response to the EC request to streamline ongoing initiatives, research topics and achieved results in the “GDP and beyond” area, e-Frame work plan foresaw a series of stocktaking reports covering the major subjects animating the debate on measuring progress, as described in the following section. The objective of the reporting activity was manifold: i) to describe the state of the art and systematise recent research results and practices; ii) to propose guidelines for improvements in selected topics (e.g. for the inclusion of stakeholders into the deliberative process); iii) to address specific guidelines to NSIs in progress measurement as well as in enhancing the availability of online visualization tools; and iv) to highlight existing gaps and research needs. The stocktaking activity covered several thematic areas animating the on-going debate over the measurement of well-being and societal progress.
Finally, one of the main goals of e-Frame project was to propose the way forward, thus contributing to setting the future European agenda on “GDP and beyond”. To this aim three Policy documents were prepared by e-Frame project, namely: i) the Convergence report which provides an overview of sustainable development measurement systems in the context of the Post-2015 process, focusing on showing the similarities between the measurement systems in order to identify the potential for convergence; ii) the Map on Policy Use of Progress Indicators which provides guidance on the use of well-being indicators in policy and summarizes e-Frame main policy findings; and finally iii) the Roadmap for future research needs which highlights existing gaps and sets out the next steps for moving forward on “GDP and beyond” agenda at a European level.
Project Results:
The work performed and main results achieved during the lifecycle of the project can be summarized in four broad areas: i)Stocktaking reports, catalogues and guidelines; ii) Public events organization; iii) Policy documents and iv) Communication and networking, training events and organisation of internal meetings. For each area, the deliverables are listed following a chronological order. A summary description of each deliverable is also provided intending to highlight the contribution to achieving the project goals.
A. Stocktaking reports, catalogues and guidelines
-Stocktaking report on subjective wellbeing, by the new economics foundation (nef)
-Report on New Measures of International Trade, by Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques (OFCE)
-Report on Footprint Calculation, by Statistics Netherland
-Report on Conceptual framework to measure social progress at the local level and case studies, by The Young Foundation (YOUNG)
-Report on the new alternatives to GDP and associated current macroeconomic indicators “Behind, besides and beyond the GDP: Alternatives to GDP and to macro-indicators” by UNIVPM- Università Politecnica delle Marche
-Stocktaking Report on Social Monitoring and Reporting in Europe by GESIS-Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences
-Survey Template to collect existing practices in National Statistical Institutes on the measurement of well-being; -Report on the Typology of statistical systems for the measurement of progress, well-being and sustainability and -Report on the identification of the specific challenges when measuring progress, well-being and sustainability by INSEE
-Report on Analysis of major practices of citizen consultation reporting analyses of contributions from a questionnaire developed to identify citizen consultation practices in the development of progress measures within the EU and beyond leading to the development of Guidelines of action for stakeholder inclusion and activation of deliberative processes, by ONS
-Catalogue ICT DELIVERING TOOLS: Catalogue of user tools and discussion relating to implementation aimed at identifying and recommending best practices to NSIs in the presentation and visualisation of official statistics on the Internet, by ONS
B. Public events organization
-Workshop on Social capital, by Maastricht University
-e-Frame Initial Conference, Conference on Measuring Well-Being and Fostering the Progress of Societies, Paris 26-28 June 2012, organized by OECD together with Istat, Statistics Netherland and Eurostat
-Workshop on Social Monitoring and Reporting in Europe, by GESIS-Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences,
-Workshop on Intangible Assets, 2-3 May 2013, by ZEW;
-Workshop on Human capital and labour market, 23-24 May 2013, by University of Birmingham;
-Workshop on Measuring Progress at a Local Level, 28-29 May 2013, by UNIPI-University of Pisa;
-Workshop on Methodologies for stakeholder inclusion and public deliberation, 26 June 2013, by ONS;
-Workshop on The Wealth of Nations in a globalising world, 18-19 July 2013, by RUG-University of Groningen;
-Workshop on New National Accounts architecture, 11-12 November 2013,by CFMR;
-Environmental workshop: indicators and missing areas, 5-6 December 2013, FEEM-Fondazione Enrico Mattei and UNISI-Siena University
-e-Frame Final Conference, Amsterdam 10 -11 February 2014, organised by Statistics Netherlands in cooperation with Istat
C. Policy documents
-Stocktaking report of measuring progress and sustainable development, The e-Frame Convergence Report: Taking Stock of the Measurement Systems for Sustainable Development and the Opportunities for Harmonisation, by Statistics Netherland
-Handbook for measuring progress, Map on policy use of progress indicators, by Istat
-A roadmap for future research needs, by Istat
D. Communication and networking, training events and organisation of internal meetings
-Kick-off meeting, Rome 26-27 January 2012, and meeting of the Leading Committee, Rome 26 January 2012, organised by Istat and development of guidelines for Workshops organisation and Stocktaking and for Preparation of reports on Workshop and Conferences, defined by the Leading Committee and prepared by Istat
-e-Frame logo and brochure, delivered by Istat
-e-Frame website, setting up, maintenance and regular updating, by Istat
-Meetings of e-Frame Advisory Board, Paris 26 June 2012 and Rome, 30 April 2014, organised by Istat
-The e-FrameNET, European Network on Measuring Progress, setting up, maintenance, enlargement and coordination by Istat
-Summer School on measurement of well-being and social progress (9-13 September 2013) organized in cooperation between the University of Trier and University of Pisa, co-.sponsored by Eurostat in the framework of the EMOS (European Master on Official Statistics).
-EU Social Monitoring and Reporting Web-Platform developed by GESIS-Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences, allowing to present continuously update social monitoring and reporting information
-Active participation in several conferences presenting e-Frame activities, objectives and outcomes by all Consortium partners, organisation of the exhibition stall of e-Frame project at the 4th OECD World Forum, New Delhi, October 2012, by Istat
-e-Frame Policy briefs: the European Network for Measuring Progress and e-Frame policy documents: moving forward the European debate on GDP and Beyond.
-Report on Communication activities describing activities and collecting documents of the Network by Istat
A. The stocktaking reports, catalogues and guidelines reported the state-of-the-art on the subject, summarised recent research results, flagged good practices and whenever appropriate provided guidelines for implementation and recommendations for further developments.
The Stocktaking report on subjective wellbeing, by the new economics foundation (nef), reviews different approaches to measuring subjective well-being and includes a review of different surveys that include subjective measures around Europe. It ends with a series of recommendations on how to better improve the quality and usefulness of the data.
The Report on New Measures of International Trade, by Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques (OFCE), summarises the recent initiatives to compile a measure of trade in value added to complement standard trade statistics in order to assess trade competitiveness and to understand trade interdependencies between countries.
The Report on Footprint Calculation, by Statistics Netherland, provides an inventory of current academic and official statistics work on the calculation of environmental footprints. It also discusses the use of multiregional input-output databases.
In the Report on Conceptual framework to measure social progress at the local level and case studies, The Young Foundation sets out definitions on local progress and guiding principles to develop a conceptual framework for a common and unifying understanding of social progress at a local level. Specific recommendations are provided on how to respond to the identified challenges.
The Report “Behind, besides and beyond the GDP: Alternatives to GDP and to macro-indicators” by UNIVPM- Università Politecnica delle Marche intends to describe the state of the art in research on alternative measures to GDP and to synthesise the most common indices suggested in recent literature. In particular, the chapter “Besides and beyond GDP” introduces the most relevant attempts of producing measures that go besides and beyond GDP indicators and proposes a taxonomy to categorize these indicators. The report ends with some recommendations on the desirable properties for indicators of well-being.
The Stocktaking Report on Social Monitoring and Reporting in Europe by GESIS-Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences seeks to take stock of major social monitoring and reporting activities existing in Europe at national as well as supranational levels. The activities covered by the report are aimed at regular monitoring of as well as reporting on the living conditions and well-being of the population and their changes over time. It reports on some “good practices” and also presents suggestions for future improvements and research agendas.
In order to contribute to enhancing harmonization of EU NSIs’ practices on “beyond GDP”, an inventory of existing practices was delivered in the Typology of statistical systems for the measurement of progress, well-being and sustainability, by INSEE. It was based on the results of a survey conducted on EU NSIs. EU NSIs are aware that any measures having the ambition to go “beyond GDP” have to take place in an international environment. They should be based on internationally agreed definitions, standards, recommendations and best practices within a common conceptual framework. Therefore, much work has been undertaken at international level. Nevertheless, in addition, many EU Member States have also launched their own initiatives and action plans to go “beyond GDP”. Indeed, countries have also to meet the national demand for statistics for special needs. Moreover, the Rio +20 summit gave a clear signal to countries worldwide that measuring progress with indicators and in particular complementing GDP is a prerequisite for good governance and societal success. The Report on the identification of the specific challenges when measuring progress, well-being and sustainability, also by INSEE, provides an overview of all major challenges ahead EU NSIs when measuring well-being and sustainability.
The report on Analysis of major practices of citizen consultation, by ONS reports the results of a survey aimed at collecting citizen consultation practices in the development of progress measures within the EU and beyond. As a matter of fact, the definition of a set of societal progress indicators needs to face a major challenge in order to be used and applied in decision-making processes. This is granting legitimacy to the tools. The general answer to this is that indicators must be developed with the participation of those who will use and learn from them. This means involving all relevant stakeholders in the framework selected for measuring progress in order to activate deliberative processes at different local levels. To this purpose, the Guidelines of action for stakeholder inclusion and activation of deliberative processes, by ONS, are intended to help organisations concerned with the measurement of progress tailor their approach to stakeholder engagement. They outline considerations, methods and tools for stakeholder engagement, with a particular focus on engagement for the development of indicators for measuring progress.
The Catalogue of user tools and discussion relating to implementation, by ONS identifies and recommends best practices to National Statistics Institutes (NSIs) in the presentation and visualisation of official statistical information on the internet. The report consists of four chapters. The first includes a brief introduction and description of the importance of the project, with a case study that illustrates how good data visualisation can benefit NSIs. The second chapter catalogues the types of data visualisations found across NSIs as a result of a stock take that was carried out. Chapter three reviews the results of the stock take, grouping the tools and technologies into four broad categories and discussing the benefits and drawbacks of each. Case studies are used to demonstrate which tools and technologies are most suitable to different types of NSIs. The report ends with some recommendations on how NSIs can move forward and use data visualisations and interactive graphics to enhance their outputs and engage with a wider audience.
B. The two e-Frame Conferences and the nine thematic workshops have been thought to stimulate the debate on “beyond GDP” themes involving all relevant stakeholders. Policy-makers, NSIs, research centres, academia, practitioners, civil societies, media and the public at large have been the selected target groups of these different dissemination strategies that contributed to strengthen the impact of the project.
The Initial e-Frame Conference on Measuring Well-Being and Fostering the Progress of Societies, took place on 26-28 June 2012 in Paris and was designed to enhance the coherence and direction of the whole e-Frame project and to promote high level exchanges among key stakeholders. The Conference, hosted by OECD, as partner of e-Frame, focused on recent activities in the field of measuring progress and well-being and aimed to fostering the European debate on the wide range of issues related to this agenda. It represented a platform for discussing how best to advance the implementation of the recommendations included in the Final Report of the European Statistical System (ESS) “Sponsorship Group on Measuring Progress, Well-Being and Sustainable Development”, adopted by the ESS Committee in November 2011. The Conference contributed to identify concrete outcomes and initiatives in order to define a EU position into the global agenda of measuring well-being and progress. It acted as a launchpad for defining a European dimension on the topic and reaching a common position in preparation of the 4th OECD that was hold in New Delhi, India on 16-19 October 2012.
The Conference gathered around 270 policy makers, statisticians, academics, and other stakeholders from the European region specifically interested in the field with the purpose to deepen on-going reflection on how to measure well-being and the progress of societies, enhance the relevance of measures and analysis for addressing key policy issues, and lead to concrete outputs, such as establishing frameworks for future co-operation. Organised as a two and a half day event, the Conference presented a thick programme carried on by prominent policy makers, statisticians, economists and analysts. It was structured in three themed sessions-material conditions, quality of life, sustainability-each one divided into an initial plenary session followed by parallel workshops on specific issues and a final plenary session where to report the discussion held in the workshops and to highlight the open issues. Moreover several specific Seminars were organised on topics related to the central theme.
The Conference launched the e-Frame European Network on Measuring Progress (e-FrameNET) hosted by the Wikiprogress platform (OECD) representing an important Web 2.0 tool to enlarge and foster the debate on well-being and societal progress facilitating the involvement of stakeholders and society at large in the e-Frame activities. The Network represents a pillar in the establishment of a European position to foster the debate towards the global frontier of Wikiprogress.org.
The e-Frame nine thematic Workshops were planned to stimulate the debate between members of the project and other external target groups (experts, academia and policy makers) on specific issues representing interrelated parts of the complex debate on “beyond GDP”. They focused on the following topics: social capital; social monitoring and reporting in Europe; intangible assets; human capital and labour market; measuring progress at a local level; stakeholder inclusion and public deliberation; globalization effects; new national accounts architecture; trends and challenges for environmental indicators.
The organisation of each workshop was generally part of a wider activity carried out in the specific work package and envisaged a preliminary activity of stocktaking and a subsequent activity of proceedings preparation. Thus, besides providing an overview of already existing research and activities in the specific field, each event was also supposed to discuss needs for future developments as well as to identify themes and issues to be put at future research and policy agendas. The nine events were thought to provide inputs for the handbook on measuring well-being and guidelines for relevant stakeholders and to contribute to the setting up of the European network of experts and stakeholders in the debate over measuring well-being, progress and sustainable development. The preparation of each event has been an initial form of networking which had its peak in the physical meeting and which continued in the preparation of proceedings addressed to experts, academy, key actors and policy makers. The final products from each workshop are intended to represent reference publications for both insiders and general audience. Highlights of the workshops have been uploaded in the project website, as well as the proceedings.
The Final Conference of e-Frame, targeted to statisticians, policy makers, journalists, academics and representatives from business and civil society, presented the most recent developments and implemented findings, spreading and discussing major projects’ milestones. The Conference was held in Amsterdam on 10-11th February 2014 and was the occasion to assess the progress made in the project, galvanize the “GDP and beyond” network and make an inventory of the steps that need to be taken forward. In order to provide a full breath of the on-going debate on measuring society’s progress, some of the speakers were external to the project and there were also speakers from other FP7 projects. The programme of the e-Frame Final Conference included discussions of the most recent developments in the measurement of “GDP and beyond”: well-being, sustainable development, inequality, globalisation, composite indicators, corporate social responsibility, Post 2015, (web)communication, environmental indicators, measuring progress at local level, stakeholder participation, social monitoring, social and human capital, education initiatives, intangibles, implications for national accounts, and some others. Many of these topics were discussed at previous e-Frame workshops however the Final Conference gave the opportunity to present in an interrelated and comprehensive framework the main outcomes of the project’s activities.
The Conference was the occasion to present overviews of the state-of the art in various subdomains of the “GDP and beyond” area, to stimulate the debate in some crucial topics of this area, to stress the importance of embedding “GDP and beyond” in society and shifting from measurement to policy use, providing policy makers with new measures and tools.
The event provided a lot of interactions on a multitude of topics. The setting up of a system that allowed audience to answer a number of questions prepared by the presenters gave the opportunity to feed the debate and to profile points of strengths and weaknesses of the “beyond GDP” debate and some important open issues. In particular, it was stated that the use of measures for progress in policy making was seldom or never applied in most countries. The audience thought that a dashboard of five headline indicators should be used rather than a single index or a set of indicators. On this issues the EU-Commissioner for the Environmental and a few of the senior policy makers did also stress the importance of single index in communication policy. It emerged the need for the statistical community to conceptualize the way in which progress is measured rather than simply collect data. It was stressed the importance of company involvement pointing out that companies sometimes were more active in corporate social responsibility than some governments. On this side there’s the need for a closer relationship between the statistical community and companies.
Participants agreed on the need for some harmonization of the many initiatives to measure progress. A number of speakers referred to the Conference of European Statisticians (CES) recommendations for Measuring Sustainable Development as an excellent starting point in the discussion on convergence. On this issue the e-Frame Convergence Report provides a stocktaking of presently available progress measures and also defines an agenda for future research. It was highlighted the problem of timeliness of data. While economic data is generally published very soon, social and environmental indicators lag far behind. Participants agreed on the need for a suitable solution if “GDP and beyond” wants to compete with economic reporting.
As stressed during the Conference, a significant goal for “GDP and beyond” is to have impact on policy making, in this context the work done by the FP7 project BRAINPOoL contributed to describe the most important factors in the acceptance of new measures of progress, the barriers experienced and the way to overcome them. e-Frame Map on Policy Use of Progress Indicators contributes to shift emphasis from measurement to policy use of indicators of human well-being and societal progress. The relevance of progress indicators stands in the way they are chosen, it is important that the selection process is supported by a public consultation or by a deliberative dialogue among relevant experts.
Finally, as outlined by some speakers, it should be considered the importance of developing models for assessing social sustainability and institutional sustainability. Moreover, a consistent theme recommended during the Conference is the need for better communication to effectively demonstrate the relevance of the “beyond GDP” agenda and to translate “beyond GDP” indicators into compelling messages for a wider audience. e-Frame Roadmap for future research needs addresses these issues in a comprehensive way with a view on European context and statistical system. To conclude, it was pointed out the need for further work to develop the theoretical foundations for “beyond GDP” narratives.
C. The Policy documents represents major outcomes of e-Frame project. They benefit from all e-Frame activities and deliverables and streamline the project results from different perspectives: analysing the potential for convergence among different European and international frameworks for measuring well-being and sustainable development; supporting policy makers and advisors to policy makers in using progress indicators for informing national and supranational policies; and finally, discussing existing gaps and research areas to be further developed at a European level in order to push forward the measurement and use of progress indicators.
More specifically, the Convergence Report by CBS provides an overview of sustainable development measurement systems in the context of the Post-2015 process, focusing on showing the similarities between the measurement systems in order to identify the potential for convergence.
The number of systems to measure sustainable development have seen exponential growth over the last four decades. Initiatives are not only restricted to the national level, but have also been developed for cities, regions, companies and products. This shows that many stakeholders now recognise that “you cannot manage what you cannot measure”. However, all these measurement systems are using different methodologies and indicators. There is therefore no common “language” for these stakeholders with which to communicate.
The Report argues that a harmonisation of the measurement systems is needed. Several types of convergence are identified: conceptual convergence (of the terms and definition used), horizontal convergence (at a single measurement level such as national, regional, company and product levels) and vertical convergence (convergence between measurement levels).
Given the enormous amount of initiatives, the Convergence Report focuses on the term sustainable development (as opposed to other concepts such as well-being or green growth). The attention for sustainable development has intensified because of the Post-2015 process which aims to create a set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015. Also a number of important harmonisation steps have already been undertaken, such as the Stiglitz Report and the joint work of the UNECE/Eurostat/OECD Conference of European Statisticians (CES) Recommendations for Measuring Sustainable Development.
A new database has been created to compare 12 composite indicators and the indicator systems of 43 countries/institutes. These 55 systems are compared to the CES recommendations framework and the most popular themes and indicators are identified. This is important input for a convergence process.
The Convergence Report ends with a number of recommendations about how to move the convergence agenda forward.
The Map on Policy Use of Progress Indicators by Istat provides guidance on the use of well-being indicators in policy and summarizes e-Frame main policy findings. It covers the topics dealt with by the e-Frame project and it is written in co-operation with project partners under Istat’s editorial coordination. It also benefits from the contributions from European Commission - Joint Research Centre and from the results achieved by EU FP7 BRAINPOol and POINT research projects.
The Map stands at the forefront of the debate: despite a rich literature, progress indicators are not yet part of the political action, expect for limited exceptions. Thus, the Map has the ambition to contribute to the current debate and to further promote policy use of progress indicators. It is moving along the border between methodological issues and policy use. Three different situations emerged: i) for some subject areas the relevant measures are not fully developed yet and some research is still needed to produce the required indicators; ii) for many other subject areas measures are currently produced by official statistics but they are often ignored by policy making and iii) finally, there exist good practices of policy making which already moved “beyond GDP” that are reported as well.
The Map is organised in three main sections, each one preceded by an introduction. The initial chapter “Policy use of progress indicators” provides a general overview of the state-of-the-art on the actual use of “beyond GDP”indicators.
The first section Measuring well-being and societal progress presents the current state of use of progress indicators in a number of specific topics according to the themes dealt with by e-Frame (i.e. Material well-being; Measurement of intangible assets within National Account Frameworks; Subjective well-being; Social capital; Worker welfare and Labour market; Human capital; Sustainable development; Trends and challenges for environmental indicators; World Input-Output Tables: Tracing the Consequences of Globalisation; Social innovation; Corporate Social Responsibility and the Global Reporting Initiative).
The second section Methodologies and tools for measuring well-being and societal progress deals with some relevant cross-cutting topics following project activities (i.e. Indicators legitimacy and stakeholders inclusion; Policies at local level: local indicators and their estimation; European NSIs’ activities “beyond GDP”; Visualisation tools and software; Social Monitoring and Reporting; Advanced training in “beyond GDP”: methodologies, indicators and use; The European Network on Measuring Progress; and Composite indicators).
Finally, the third section Whispering well-being in the ears of the prince: towards an integrated policy framework for better lives describes overall frameworks supporting a well-being centred policy making. It highlights “existing policy frameworks where well-being serves as the integrating lens of policy targets and instruments”.
The Map is intended to be a flexible guide for a policy use of progress indicators. To this aim, it is composed by self-contained chapters allowing users to read only the chapters of interest without being obliged to follow a strict order.
The Roadmap for future research needs by Istat highlights existing gaps and sets out the next steps for moving forward on “GDP and beyond” agenda at a European level. The Roadmap builds on all the activities carried out by e-Frame Consortium: from the stocktaking work to the discussions and results presented in the project Conferences and Workshops as well as in the meetings of the Advisory Board and other International forums participated by e-Frame Consortium. It was intended to be a dynamic tool to be periodically updated, thus three releases were foreseen and delivered during the life cycle of e-Frame project.
The Roadmap responds to the EC’s call to “identify research needs and gaps in relevant information and methods and propose research topics to be addressed at the European level”. Furthermore, it attempts at categorising the research needs in four main areas in order to facilitate the identification of suitable actions and research activities. The four areas are:
• Measurement issues in official statistics. Research topics related to official statistics and in particular to the availability and accessibility of progress indicators are identified and discussed. In fact, official statistics is the main and so far most reliable information source for progress indicators.
• Exploiting non official sources. Gaps and needs that arise when exploiting non-official sources to complement official information on well-being and sustainable development are analysed in this area given that non official data sources (e.g. Big data) are becoming increasingly available and serviceable.
• Communication issues. The need for a more effective and straightforward communication policy in order to further support the use of progress indicators together with GDP in daily life is emphasized. It is vital to reach out to policy makers, their advisors and economic journalists as well as citizens in the “beyond GDP” movement.
• For a policy use of progress indicators. The research topics that need to be addressed for strengthening a policy use of progress indicators are discussed. It is not only a matter of being able to use progress indicators to inform domain specific policies, rather it is necessary to look forward to a wide integrated vision identifying the main drivers of well-being and to assess the overall impact of alternative policy options on people’s life.
The Roadmap ends with some final remarks stressing the necessity to agree on priorities and to set a timetable for future actions at European level in order to put the well-being measurements into concrete, to support policy makers and to gain a wider and wider audience involving the society at large into the “beyond GDP” debate.
D. The Communication and networking activities had a prominent role in e-Frame project and were aimed at spreading project information and results as well as fostering the European debate and position in the global movement on “GDP and beyond”. ISTAT, as project coordinator, was in charge of producing the communication tools to give evidence to the activities of the project and with the aim of communicating its work on going and its results and to involve the stakeholders and the public at large. The main communications tools, developed following the communication guidelines of the EC for SSH projects, were the release of a Brochure and the set up and maintenance of the project website. Besides them, ISTAT and the partners of the Consortium carried out diverse activities to communicate and disseminate the project work plan and its results.
The e-Frame website (www.eframeproject.eu) was released at the beginning of the project. The website, designed to be the main communication tool of the project, has been updated and maintained during the second period as a dynamic and interactive tool aimed not only at disseminating and communicating the project activities but also at becoming a European area of reference for the debate on measuring well-being “beyond GDP”. The website has promoted networking both among participants and with a targeted audience. The website was regularly updated throughout the lifetime of the project and will remain online 5 years after the expiring date of the project.
The first meeting of e-Frame Advisory Board took place in Paris on 26 June 2012 back to back to the project Initial Conference. The Advisory Board represents the high level body in charge of providing advices and guidance for the development of the activities of the project to ensure high quality and excellence to the outputs. It was chaired by Enrico Giovannini, Istat President and by Gosse van der Veen, CBS Director General. It was composed by the following outstanding experts: Sabina Alkire (Oxford University); Bart van Ark (Conference Board Washington/University of Groningen); Anthony Atkinson (Oxford University); Jeroen van den Bergh (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona/ ICREA /VU University Amsterdam); Daniel Daianu (former Romanian Minister of Finance); Hubert Escaith (World Trade Organization); Jean-Paul Fitoussi (OFCE); Jeni Klugman (World Bank); Alan Krueger (Princeton University); Khalid Malik (United Nations Development Programme); Andrea Saltelli (JRC-ISPRA); Joseph Stiglitz (Columbia University).
During the meeting a general overview of the project - illustrating its motivations, objectives and activities - together with presentations of the main achievements reached so far were given by the project leaders.
All the members of the AB reacted with great interest in the project and its work plan and an impressive debate on the themes of the project took place. It was remarked by the AB that the complexity of the work plan and the vastness of the themes would require a strong conceptual and organisational effort by the project coordinator and the Consortium. With regard to the contents of the work plan the following elements were highlighted: the necessity to include the private sector (e.g. Gallup, GRI and SCR initiatives) in the debate in order to enlarge the usual audience; the necessity to educate the market to read new measurements of progress and well-being “beyond GDP” as a chance to catch; the necessity to study indicators of well-being at local, national and global level; the necessity to add knowledge in the stocktaking activity of the project not limiting to portraying existing results but capitalizing them and to highlight the overall sense of the huge amount of work going on; the opportunity to feed the debate to find new ideas and opinion without losing the importance of GDP as an economic measure that as to be integrated (e.g. composite indicators, dashboards) and not to be replaced.
As to the recent international activities, Mr Giovannini stressed the transnational dimension of e-Frame debate asserting that the interaction between the European level and the global context is the approach to follow to go towards the definition of new indicators on measurement of progress and well-being “beyond GDP”. Indicators should be harmonized at the global level in order to compare the growth among the continents beyond nations. Mr Giovannini went on referring to the final resolution of Rio+20 drawing the attention on the global dimension of the topic and the constraint to define the target of the users of the indicators of well-being. Additionally Mr Giovannini highlighted the importance of the forthcoming 4th World Forum of New Delhi emphasising the commitment to define a new policy framework and the crucial importance of the political approach. At a European level, Mr Giovannini reported about the Conference of European Statisticians which was held in June 2012 which delivered a report on sustainable development. He underscored how the great discussion that took place among the participants in the conference to draft the above report witnesses that it’s not fully clear what is the way to follow.
The members of the AB interviewed on the communications given by Mr Giovannini advising that: it is necessary to deepen all the issues related to well-being; e-Frame has to be flexible to follow the changes and the debate within Europe and worldwide; e-Frame has to participate to the main events organised worldwide in order to follows the advances on well-being.
The second meeting of e-Frame Advisory Board took place in Rome on 30 April 2014, in Istat premises. It was chaired by Mr Enrico Giovannini, Professor of Economic Statistics at the Economics and Finance Department of the University of Rome Tor Vergata, former Minister of Labor and Social Policies, Italy, and Mr. Bert Kroese, Statistics Netherlands Deputy Director General.
The meeting was aimed at informing the Advisory Board on the project outcomes and discussing how to progress with the European agenda on “GDP and beyond”. As inputs for discussion, the project leaders gave summary presentations concerning: the key messages from the project Final Conference, an overview of e-Frame outcomes and Policy documents.
In the following round table, the members of the AB expressed in turn their views and provided useful inputs and advice.
At the conclusion of the round table, Mr Enrico Giovannini took the floor drawing some conclusions.
• The need to invest on models was defined of primary importance. A positive reaction is coming from several countries in testing with the new data but a negative aspect is that time series are very short. In this respect different types of modeling and microdata are considered of great importance. It is desirable that statistical offices became the places where the merging of databases could be done and that there should be given the possibility to rely on microdata or analytical tools that talk about behaviours, not only on aggregate figures. In this sense the issue of non-linearity was suggested to be assumed as a norm and the subjective behaviour’s indicators reinforced. In this field the concept of intangibles could provide help.
• The Brundtland Commision “sustainable development” concept was mentioned which involved not only economic, social and environmental levels but also the “institutional” one which has been overlooked but, as Mr Giovannini emphasised, the crises is putting at risk the institutional sustainability also at the European level.
• A huge problem of timeliness still continues. One of the research fields suggested to foster relates to the way to obtain early estimates of progress indicators and a message launched to reach the Commission for future research is a major investment on early estimates of social and environmental data.
• Finally, in order to engage more the policymakers another language should be used, connected with the big conceptual debate taking or to take place because of the current and future crises.
The set-up of a European Network on Measuring Progress - e-FrameNET was carried out. The e-Frame Network was conceived with the aim to foster the European position on “beyond GDP” capitalizing on the debate within the activities of the project. The Network had a dedicated space on Wikipogress platform, hosted by OECD, allowing its members to take part to the debate on “beyond GDP” in a world-wide perspective.
The e-FrameNET was launched at e-Frame Initial Conference. It was set up by Istat with the overarching goal of stating a European position on the measurement of well-being and progress “beyond GDP” and enable interaction at global level through the Wikiprogress platform (hosted by OECD).
The Network’s structure has allowed members to communicate through the e-Frame website and the Wikiprogress platform in order to connect stakeholders, researchers, organisations, citizens and policymakers in the on going debate on what constitutes the most “accurate” measurement of well-being and societal progress. Members of the e-FrameNET were organised in a database, centrally managed by Istat, to respect the privacy rules, which allowed for the creation of mailing lists and for disseminating details about relevant activities.
The position of e-FrameNET on the Wikiprogress platform has represented its key strength driving the European local, national and international debate towards a highly global perspective. It constitutes the European Network, running alongside the Regional Networks of Africa and Latin America. It contributed to discussions at a regional and subject-specific level.
The Network has released Monthly New Alerts and has offered interactivity through on line discussions, blogs, eBriefs, aiming to elevate the visibility of the findings of pertinent projects on “beyond GDP” and impacting over the global debate. It participated in various of the online discussions launched by Wikiprogress on the themes linked to progress and wellbeing (e.g. “Reducing poverty is achievable” -March 2013, “How Should Child Well-Being be Measured?” -June 2013, “How Should Older People’s Well-being be Measured?” -October 2013, “Engaging citizens in well-being and progress statistics” - April 2014,..).
Actually, the Network forms a community around the subject of measuring well-being able to contribute to the definition of “better statistics” produced by the EU NSIs and beyond. Key members include European National Statistical Institutes, civil society organisations, academia and research centres. The members are geographically spread all over Europe and abroad representing twenty-four countries up to date.
The e-FrameNET has become and currently represents a consolidate tool to foster the European position on “GDP and beyond” debate. Its community has given a significant contribution to foster the debate at European and global level. The Network will continue its activity, under Istat’s charge, after the end of the e-Frame project with the aim to representing an increasing critical mass in the “GDP and beyond” movement.
The Summer School on measurement of well-being and social progress was organised by University of Trier (UT) and University of Pisa (UNIPI) in cooperation with Eurostat in view of the establishment of the European Master on Official Statistics (EMOS). It took place from 9 -13 September 2013.
As known, one of the main objectives of the e-Frame project was to spread the debate on “GDP and beyond” throughout Europe and to raise awareness on the topic. In addition, the Stiglitz-Sen-Fitoussi Report highlighted the existence of a large gap between the statistical measurement of socio-economic phenomena and citizens’ perception of the latter. Therefore, it was desirable to improve the understanding of statistical data and indicators of the public. The ultimate goal of this process is to enrich society with better information which could strengthen the functioning of our democracy. The Trier-Pisa Summer School tackled the two mentioned issues, raising awareness of the “GDP and beyond” debate from a contextual point of view as well as increasing the understanding of the required statistics from a methodological perspective.
The Summer School was attended by over 100 master and PhD students, coming from a large variety of different backgrounds including economics, social and political sciences, as well as staff members of statistical institutes and other interested attendees. A total of 19 internationally recognized experts in their respective fields held lectures about nine different sub-topics. These lectures can be portioned into two blocks:
• Block A: i) Overview about “GDP and beyond”; ii) Social indicators; iii) Well-being; iv) Environmental indicators; and v) Moving forward.
• Block B: i) National accounts; ii) Accuracy measurement; iii) Analysis of data and quality; and iv) Measuring progress at local level.
While the first block focused on the main issues with regard to contents to increase understanding of the general topic, the second block concentrated on methodological aspects to provide insights on the statistical background of the theme.
The lectures took place at three places, the University of Trier, the University of Pisa, and Eurostat; they were broadcasted using internet technologies to the remaining other two locations, so that the participants at all three locations were able to actively participate in each lecture. This concept has been used successfully in the BBT (Berlin-Bamberg-Trier) Master of Survey Statistics since 2010. Since this Summer School represented a prototype concept for EMOS, it included Eurostat as a third host of the event. The participation of Eurostat, who also co-sponsored the Summer School, enabled the interaction of university researchers and official statisticians, creating the basis for fruitful cooperation as well as dialogue among participants with different backgrounds. Because of that role, the Summer School set the stage for further European-wide collaborations between universities and NSOs.
Altogether, the Summer School was an enormous success and both major goals were accomplished: with over 100 participants from different fields of expertise and professional background, the “GDP and beyond” agenda was spread widely within the research community, raising public understanding of the statistical implications. The Trier-Pisa Summer School was also pioneering in terms of using state-of-the-art technologies to connect postgraduate students, university researchers, and official statisticians in a Europe-wide workshop. The chance to test and improve interactive broadcasting with student participation was successful. Both the utilized facilities as well as the general concept of the dissemination action should be highly recommended for future initiatives in this field.
Furthermore, it was designed a flyer for advertising the Summer School and developed a dedicated website containing all important information about the course. The announcements of the training course with the programme and the registration forms were published on the website of e-Frame project.
The European Social Monitoring and Reporting Web-Platform (www.gesis.org/social-monitoring-reporting-europe) or portal was created by GESIS as an integrated online source of information on relevant activities in the field of social monitoring and reporting, such as the launch of new social reports or monitoring instruments, new issues of existing publication series as well as recent and forthcoming conferences and other events related to social monitoring and reporting. The web portal – which has been implemented as part of the web presence of GESIS’ Social Indicators Research Centre ZSi (www.gesis.org/social-indicators/) – will be continuously updated and enhanced in the future. It shall provide access to information on the activities itself as well as the institutions behind. The platform also showcases research results and outcomes from various monitoring and reporting activities on social progress, well-being and quality of life and moreover seeks to enhance and facilitate the collaboration between the diverse actors in the field across Europe.
The individual menu items are structured as follows:
• The menu item Monitoring well-being in Europe is meant for giving access to European social monitoring instruments.
• Under the menu item European Social Reporting the web portal provides access to articles and reports addressing issues of social progress, quality of life and well-being in Europe.
• The menu item Conference series «Social Monitoring and Reporting in Europe» provides detailed information – including access to programmes and presentations - on the conference series held at the German-Italian-Centre Villa Vigoni annually since 2006.
• The section Conference Announcements and Recent Events informs about recent conferences and events related to social monitoring and reporting, social indicators research, quality-of-life studies and the measurement of well-being and social progress.
• The item New Releases is considered as a newsticker and informs about new releases of social reports as well as social monitoring initiatives and instruments. The new releases are being made directly accessible via web-links.
Moreover, the web-portal provides online access to an interactive database on currently ca. 230 social monitoring and reporting activities in Europe, which forms another outcome of the stocktaking work carried out by e-Frame project.
Finally, the web platform invites visitors to contribute to the page by reporting relevant news and making suggestions for additional information offers and improvements of the portal.
The web-platform will be continuously updated and improved after the discontinuation of the e-Frame project.
Potential Impact:
Within the framework of the Work Programme 2011 on Socio-economic Science and Humanities, e-Frame project built on the latest political directions of the European Commission, in particular on the three priorities identified in the Europe 2020 strategy (http://ec.europa.eu/eu2020/index_en.htm):
• Smart growth: developing an economy based on knowledge and innovation;
• Sustainable growth: promoting a more resource efficient, greener and more competitive economy;
• Inclusive growth: fostering a high-employment economy delivering social and territorial cohesion.
As stated in the Work Programme 2011 on Socio-economic Science and Humanities, Europe needs to be well prepared to deal with the aftermath of global and regional economic crises and their social implications. To develop and implement appropriate policies, it is important to think out of the box beyond the traditional economic indicators.
All these issues are broadly included within a long-lasting international debate over the measurement of economic performance, development, wellbeing and more generally the progress of societies. Measuring the well-being of individuals and progress of societies, has been a concern of statisticians for some time but, over recent years, the discussion on how to measure progress is gathering momentum worldwide. It involves all levels of policy makers and is attracting increasing media attention.
e-Frame project took into account all relevant aspects of this global debate in order to streamline the activities of relevant stakeholders (NSI, European institutions and policy makers, researchers and civil society) and to propose the way forward. Specifically, it provided a European framework and fora for the debate over the measurement of well-being, progress and sustainable development.
In responding to the EC call, e-Frame largely contributed to enhancing the European dimension by looking at the use of indicators within EU policies (in particular at the Europe 2020 strategy), as well as by proposing guidelines and recommendations for future activities within the European Research Area and the European Statistical System. e-Frame ensured coordination of “beyond GDP” activities putting at the centre of the action the national statisticians so to lead to improved official statistics as suggested by the Call.
e-Frame dissemination activities were organised around the project website and included physical meetings as well as networking initiatives. The organisation of nine thematic workshops and two general Conferences were major e-Frame dissemination events that gathered experts, practioners, Commission representatives, policy makers and stakeholders in general. A key objective of e-Frame was to enhance the networking in order to develop and strengthen ties among relevant stakeholders. To this purpose, a EU Social Monitoring and Reporting Web-Platform was developed allowing to present continuously update social monitoring and reporting information. The e-Frame European Network on Measuring Progress (e-FrameNET), launched in June 2012 during the project Initial Conference, contributed and will contribute after the end of the project, to the “beyond GDP” debate from a European perspective. It stands as one of the important European digital initiatives, sponsored by the European Commission, carried out for sharing information and data.
The Summer School on measurement of well-being and social progress (9-13 September 2013) organized in cooperation between the University of Trier and University of Pisa, contributed to advance training on “GDP and beyond” in Europe. The Summer School represented a prototype concept for EMOS (European Master on Official Statistics), thus it included Eurostat as a third host of the event. The participation of Eurostat, who also co-sponsored the Summer School, enabled the interaction of university researchers and official statisticians, creating the basis for fruitful cooperation as well as dialogue among participants with different backgrounds. Because of that role, the Summer School set the stage for further European-wide collaborations between universities and NSIs.
e-Frame activities also included stocktaking of past, recent and ongoing research in response to the EC request to streamline ongoing initiatives and results. The objective of the reporting activity was manifold: i) to describe the state of the art and systematise recent research results and practices; ii) to propose guidelines for improvements in selected topics (e.g. for the inclusion of stakeholders into the deliberative process); iii) to address specific guidelines to NSIs in progress measurement as well as in enhancing the availability of online visualization tools; and iv) to highlight existing gaps and research needs. As a result, e-Frame delivered comprehensive thematic reports covering the major subjects animating the debate on measuring progress with the aim of fostering the European position.
e-Frame delivered three cross-cutting policy documents streamlining the project findings and paving the way for future activities from different angles. The Convergence Report summarizes the main findings in the measurement of well-being and sustainable development and identifies the potential for convergence in measurement systems in the context of the Post-2015 process. The Map on Policy use of progress indicators aims at supporting a greater use of well-being and sustainable development indicators in policies at the different levels, also taking into account overall frameworks supporting a well-being centred policy making. The Roadmap for future research needs highlights areas that need further investments and developments within the European Statistical System and will contribute to reach the objectives of EU policies and Europe 2020 strategy.
As pointed out by the Roadmap, in order to move forward the European agenda on “GDP and beyond”, there are several important gaps that need to be filled in as well as actions that need to be further developed or implemented.
In many areas, National Statistical Institutes can play a leading role by calculating well-being, societal progress and sustainability indicators that respond to the users’ needs and satisfy high quality requirements such as timeliness, geographical disaggregation and representativeness, comparability over time and accuracy. They could also adequately support the process of integration of official and non-official statistics given the know-how and the expertise gained in setting quality requirements and in developing statistical models for integrating and jointly analysing data from different sources.
Whilst it is no more possible to ignore non official data sources, quality will become more and more a crucial aspect for sorting out data (and data producers) that can be trustfully used in guiding evidence-based policies: data quality will set out the boundaries of public interest and serviceable data separating them from all the others.
In this respect, researchers and analysts in different field (e.g. economic, social and environment) can find an important reference, for their work in developing indicators or using (official and non-official data sources) for their analyses, in the European quality framework and in the methodological expertise gained by NSIs
In reality as available resources are limited, it is vital to join efforts and to coordinate research activities at a European level. The recommendations of the Sponsorship Group (ESS, 2011a) are a notable example of enhancing progress statistics. Partnerships between NSIs, the academia and other relevant actors in the well-being debate could contribute to a large extent to reach faster and sounder results in the above mentioned areas.
Particularly challenging needs described in “Measurement issues in official statistics” and in “For a policy use of progress indicators” paragraphs could be better tackled in partnership, even where some demands explicitly call for a NSIs’ proactive role.
With regard to the area of “Communication issues”, the existing dissemination channels (both official and non-official) can be exploited and complemented by new ones in order to put the progress indicators at the front of the public debate and promote their use by policy makers. In order to increase the use and relevance of “beyond GDP” indicators, it is extremely important to establish a dialogue with the society at large. This can be achieved, among others, by exploiting the potentialities of the web 2.0 and by activating bottom up deliberative processes.
Even though the Roadmap identifies a number of “needs” to be addressed in future research agendas at a European level in order consolidate the availability and the use of progress indicators, it would be recommended, as an initial step, to find a large consensus on setting priorities with regard to the above mentioned needs and to schedule the future actions in the light of the objectives of Horizon 2020.
All deliverables have been released on e-Frame website (www.eframeproject.eu) and are available on the European Network section at the home page of Wikiprogress platform hosted by OECD (www.wikiprogress.org). Their release has been advertised and disseminated to the European Network Community and beyond.
List of Websites:
www.eframeproject.eu