ACC SUBCOMMITTEE ON STATISTICAL ACTIVITIES

ACC SUBCOMMITTEE ON STATISTICAL ACTIVITIES	SA/2000/17
Thirty-fourth session	14 September 2000
Washington D.C., 20-22 September 2000
Item 8 of the provisional agenda

CLASSIFICATION OF STATISTICS AND STATISTICAL ACTIVITIES

Note by ECE

1. At its thirty-third session the ACC Subcommittee on Statistical Activities developed proposals concerning the changes that needed to be made in the statistics part of the ACC Programme Classification and the classification used in the integrated presentation of statistical programmes of ECE, OECD and EUROSTAT to bring the classifications into correspondence. The Chairman sent the proposals to the CES Chairman (see CES/BUR.2000/13 and CES/BUR.2000/13/Add.1).

2. The CES Bureau considered the matter at its 10-11 November 1999 meeting. The outcome of the Bureau's discussion on it is recorded in paras. 37 and 38 of the report of the Bureau's meeting, which are reproduced below.

Excerpt of report of the Bureau's Nov. 1999 meeting (CES/BUR2000/17)

IX. CONFORMITY BETWEEN CLASSIFICATIONS OF FIELDS OF STATISTICS USED BY THE ACC AND THE CES

37. The Bureau agreed that the CES classification of statistics used in the IP should be amended so that it would correspond more closely with the revised statistics part of the ACC Programme Classification contained in SA/1999/8. This involves (action by the secretariat):

a) changing the title of P.E. 3.4 to "Transport and communication statistics";

b) changing the title of P.E. 3.10 to "Agriculture, forestry and fishery statistics";

c) separately identifying within PA 4 (social and demographic statistics) "Social security statistics" (the secretariat has decided to separately identify them in P.E. 4.13 (Statistics of household income and expenditures, of the welfare of the population and of poverty and income inequality); and

d) separately identifying within PA 5 (Environment statistics) a new programme element on "Meteorology statistics"

38. The Bureau agreed that it would be useful to have the CES classification correspond to the ACC classification to the greatest extent possible, so that there would be only one classification at the global level. However, it noted that the CES classification is a more detailed one than the ACC classification, and the Bureau agreed that that greater detail should not be sacrificed. Therefore, it asked the ECE secretariat to amend the classification of statistical activities that will be used for purposes of preparing the new version of the Integrated Presentation for the 2000 plenary session so that it would correspond as much as possible with the ACC classification, without sacrificing any of the greater detail that currently exists in the CES classification (action by the secretariat).

3. The new titles and headings of the CES classification of Programme Elements in the CES's Integrated Presentation are the ones shown on the ECE web site for the latest version of the Integrated Presentation (CES/2000/26 and Adda 1-6) (see Table I of CES/2000/26)

4. The view of the Bureau on this was endorsed by the CES at its 2000 plenary session.

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