International Conference on Big Data for Official Statistics
Organized by the CSO Ireland and the United Nations Statistics Division

Overview

The daily use of mobile phones and social media, as well as the routine checking of equipment, such as cars or home appliances, generate continuous streams of electronic data. These data sources, commonly referred to as Big Data, can potentially be used in the compilation of official statistics for the purpose of evidence-based decision making. The UN Statistical Commission therefore established a Global Working Group (GWG) in 2014, which was mandated to provide strategic vision, direction and coordination on the use of Big Data for Official Statistics. The GWG promotes the practical use of Big Data, capacity building and sharing experiences, while finding solutions for the associated challenges.

The GWG organized its first global conference on Big Data in Beijing in October 2014 and showcased a variety of examples of Big Data projects for official statistics, such as Mobile phone data for daytime population statistics, Satellite imagery data for agriculture statistics and Social media data for consumer confidence indicators. The second global conference took place in Abu Dhabi in October 2015, where the GWG tried to more systematically progress in the use of Big Data in the production process of official statistics.

In line with the priorities of official statistics and with the urgent needs for support of SDG indicators, the third Global Conference on Big Data in Dublin wants to take the next steps in the utilization of non-traditional data sources. Going beyond the existing examples of isolated use of mobile phone data, social media data or satellite imagery data, innovations are needed in the daily production of official statistics, which requires real partnerships with the private sector, new skills and infrastructure, and clear links between these available Big Data sources and the SDG indicators. New public-private partnerships could make data, services and applications accessible and accelerate the synergies for research and capacity building.

UN DESA website

Conference Agenda

Click here for Agenda for Meeting of the GWG on Big Data for Official Statistics
Click here for Agenda for Dialogue on Access to Big Data and related Privacy issues

Tuesday, 30 August 2016

Access and partnerships

Opening Session - Day 1
08:00 – 09:00
Registration
09:00 – 10:00
Ceremonial Opening
Moderator – Padraig Dalton, Director-General, CSO Ireland
  • Mr. Eoghan Murphy, Minister of State for Financial Services, eGovernment and Public Procurement, Ireland
  • Mr. Christian Friis Bach, United Nations Under Secretary General and Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe
  • Mr. Lenni Montiel, United Nations Assistant Secretary General for Economic Development
10:00 - 10:15
Introductory remarks by the organizers
  • Mr. Padraig Dalton - Director General, CSO Ireland
  • Ms. Lisa Bersales - National Statistician of the Philippines
  • Mr. Ronald Jansen - Assistant Director, United Nations Statistics Division
10:15 - 10:45
Keynote
Mr. Ronan Harris, CEO, Google, Ireland
10:45 - 11:10
Coffee break
11:10 - 13:00
High-Level Panel Discussion on Access and Partnerships
Format – 10-minute presentations, 45 minutes Q&A
Moderator – Padraig Dalton - Director General, CSO Ireland
13:00 - 14:15
Lunch break
Afternoon Session - Day 1
14:15 - 16:00
Best practices on Access and Partnerships
Format – 15-minute presentations, 30 minutes Q&A
Moderator – Peter Struijs, Statistics Netherlands
16:00 - 16:30
Tea break
16:30 - 17:45
Best practices on Partnerships and Data Management Solutions
Format – 15-minute presentations, 30 minutes Q&A
Moderator – Albrecht Wirthmann, Eurostat
  • Ms. Hélène Bérard, Statistics Canada
  • Mr. Joe Drumgoole, MongoDB
  • Mr. Mark Rowlands, Amazon Web Services

Click here for Agenda for Meeting of the GWG on Big Data for Official Statistics
Click here for Agenda for Dialogue on Access to Big Data and related Privacy issues

Wednesday, 31 August 2016

Capacity Building for Innovation in Official Statistics

Morning Session - Day 2
09:00 – 09:10
Overview of the day
Ivo Havinga, Assistant Director, United Nations Statistics Division
09:10 – 09:40
Keynote
Ms. Heather Savory, Deputy National Statistician, UK
09:40 - 11:10
High-Level Panel Discussion – Innovation in Official Statistics
Format – 5-minute presentations, 60 minutes Q&A
Moderator – Bert Kroese, Statistics Netherlands
  • Ms. Heather Savory, ONS, UK
  • Ms. Sylvie Michaud, Statistics Canada
  • Mr. Padraig Dalton, CSO Ireland
  • Ms. Elham Saleh, GCC-Stat
  • Mr. Aurel Schubert, ECB
  • Mr. Georgy Oksenoyt, Rosstat
11:10 - 11:30
Coffee break
11:30 - 12:15
Session 1: The role of statistical training institutes
Format – 10-minute presentations, 15 minutes Q&A
Moderator – Sufyan Al-Barghouti, Federal Competitiveness and Statistics Authority, UAE
  • Ivo Havinga, United Nations Statistics Division
  • Oliver Chinganya, UN ECA
  • Prof. Innocent Ngalinda, East African Statistical Training Center
  • Mr. Albrecht Wirthmann, European Statistical Training Program
12:15 - 13:15
Session 2: Smart investments in innovations in official statistics
Format – 10-minute presentations, 20 minutes Q&A
Moderator – Ronald Jansen, United Nations Statistics Division
13:15 - 14:30
Lunch break
Afternoon Session - Day 2
14:30 - 15:30
Session 3: Innovative approaches to capacity building in the use of Big Data
Format – 15-minute presentations, 15 minutes Q&A
Moderator – Steven Vale, UNECE
15:35 - 16:10
Parallel session 4a:
Sandbox project on social media data for sentiment analysis/mobility
Moderator – Steven Vale, UNECE
 
Parallel session 4b:
Crop Production Statistics using Satellite data
Moderator – Sybille McKeown, ABS
16:10 - 16:30
Tea break
16:30 - 17:20
Parallel session 5a:
Web scraping for job and price statistics
Format – 20-minute presentations, 10 minutes Q&A
Moderator – Niels Ploug, Statistics Denmark
 
Parallel session 5b:
Data Analytics and Visualization Solutions
Format – 15-minute presentations, 10 minutes Q&A
Moderator – Ronald Jansen, United Nations Statistics Division
17:25 - 18:00
Parallel session 6a:
Future learning
Moderator – Niels Ploug, Statistics Denmark
 
Parallel session 6b:
Agile Project Management
Moderator – Ronald Jansen, United Nations Statistics Division

Click here for Agenda for Meeting of the GWG on Big Data for Official Statistics
Click here for Agenda for Dialogue on Access to Big Data and related Privacy issues

Thursday, 1 September 2016

Big Data and the SDG indicators

Morning Session - Day 3
09:00 – 10:30
High-Level Panel on Big Data for SDG indicators
Format – 10-minute introductory statements, 60 minutes Q&A
Moderator – Ivo Havinga, United Nations Statistics Division
Introductory statements by:
  • Mr. Niels Ploug - Statistics Denmark
  • Ms. Lisa Bersales - National Statistician of the Philippine Statistics Authority and co-chair of the Inter-Agency Expert Group on SDG indicators
  • Aboubacar Beye - Director General, National Agency of Statistics and Demographics, Senegal
  • Ms. Aberash Tariku Abaye - Deputy Director General, Central Statistical Agency, Ethiopia
  • Mr. Mohammad Abdul Wazed - Director General, Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics
10:30 - 11:00
Coffee break
11:00 - 12:30
Session 1: Big Data for SDG
Format – 15-minute presentations, 30 minutes Q&A
Moderator – Amparo Ballivian, World Bank
12:30 - 14:00
Lunch break
Afternoon Session - Day 3
14:00 - 15:45
Session 2: Big Data and SDG
Format – 20-minute presentations, 25 minutes Q&A
Moderator – Misha Lokshin, World Bank
14:00 - 15:45
15:45 - 16:15
Tea break
16:15 - 17:45
Concluding Panel
  • Action plan of Big Data for Official Statistics
  • Positioning of Big Data at the UN World Data Forum in Cape Town (January 2017)
17:45 - 18:00
Closing ceremony

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Richard Murphy
bigdata2016@cso.ie

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