12 May 2010

Committee for the Coordination of Statistical Activities

Conference on Data Quality for International Organizations
Helsinki, Finland, 6-7 May 2010

Programme and papers

Thursday, 6 May 2010
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15.00 - 15.15 Welcome and introduction (Note change in start time)

• Statistics Finland: Heli Jeskanen-Sundström
• Eurostat: Pieter Everaers
• UNCTAD: Henri Laurencin

15.15 - 17.00 Session 1: Introduction: Background and current state of the art of quality assurance frameworks in international organizations and at the national level (principles, codes of practices, ongoing initiatives, existing handbooks, guidelines and other tools)

Organizer: UNSD

• Eurostat: Martina Hahn "Quality assurance activities at Eurostat"
• IMF: Mohammed El Qorchi "IMF’s Data Quality Assessment Framework" and Powerpoint presentation
• UNSD: Mary Jane Holupka "Towards a National Quality Assurance Framework: The UN Statistical Commission Initiative" and Powerpoint presentation
• UN-Habitat: Gora Mboup "Habitat Agenda"
• World Bank: Soong Sup Lee "World Bank Open Data Initiative" (background document)

17.00 - 17.15 Coffee break

17.15 - 18.00 Session 2: Quality assurance for statistics based on administrative sources/microdata

Organizer: IMF

• ECB: Francis Gross “Data quality management for securities - the case of the Centralised Securities Data Base”
• UNESCO: Hendrik van der Pol "Assuring Data Quality at the UNESCO Institute for Statistics"

Friday, 7 May 2010
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9.00 - 10.30 Session 3: Selected country experiences with quality assurance work, with a special focus on formulating their needs and expectations vis-à-vis support from international organisations

Organizer: FAO

• Austria: Thomas Burg "Quality at Statistics Austria"
• South Africa: Seble Worku "South African Statistical Quality Assessment Framework"
• Mauritius: Set Fong Cheung "Case of Mauritius" and Powerpoint presentation
• Canada: Claude Julien "Statistics Canada's Quality Assurance Framework"
• Country consultant: Michael Colledge "Experiences in the Use of Quality Standards"

10.30 - 11.00 Coffee break

11.00 - 13.00 Session 4: The role of international organisations in supporting national statistical institutes' quality initiatives (all participants will be divided up into one of the following 3 groups to discuss and then report back to the plenary on:)

Organizers: AfDB, UNSD and Eurostat

• How can international organisations better divide the work related to improving data quality at the national level, including the provision of support for the institutional setups for national statistical institutes?
• How are or could international organisations help national initiatives on quality? (Role of peer reviews, quality coaching, quality tool kits, etc.
• How can national quality reports be aligned with the various international initiatives?

13:00 - 14:15 Lunch break

14:15 - 16:00 Session 5: How are international organisations measuring/ensuring public satisfaction?

Organizer: UN-Habitat

• Eurostat: Stephen Clarke "Monitoring public satisfaction through user satisfaction surveys"
• OECD: David Brackfield “OECD Initiative on Measuring Trust”

16:00 - 16:30 Coffee break

16:30 - 17:30 Summary of the conference, conclusions and the next CCSA quality event

Organizers: Eurostat, UNCTAD and UNSD