Methodology

City Groups   Voorburg Group

Voorburg Group on Service Statistics

Photo Attribution: "Voorburg, Martinuskerk" by ekenitr - Licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0

Purpose and Brief History

Since 1987, representatives from national statistical agencies have met annually to address selected problems in statistical methods. The Voorburg Group derives its name from the city in Netherlands where it first met in 1987. The experience with the Voorburg Group has shown that the international community can benefit greatly from such a process. These informal consultative groups are an innovative way to use country resources to improve and speed up the international standards development process.

The mission of the Voorburg Group on Services Statistics is to establish and maintain an internationally comparable methodology for measuring output and producer price indexes for the service industries. We focus on the development of concepts and methods, the sharing of best practices, and identification of classification needs. The Voorburg Group has contributed over the years to building up and sharing a considerable and growing body of knowledge of Service Sector Statistics. It has prompted international cooperation in the development of standards and has assisted in resolving statistical and measurement challenges in the Service Sector.

Enquiries relating to the Voorburg Group should be addressed to the Group's co-chairs:

Bonnie Murphy
United States Bureau of Labor Statistics
E-mail : Murphy.bonnie@bls.gov
Telephone: (+1) 202-691-7689

Marcus Friden
Statistics Sweden
E-mail : Marcus.Friden@scb.se
Telephone: (+46) 10-479-4319

Voorburg Group on Service Statistics Website: https://www.voorburggroup.org/

The Group maintains a permanent website, currently hosted by Statistics Canada, on which all of the Group's outputs can be found. At this site you can search for all the papers presented at every meeting, view the agenda and participants for all meetings and get the latest Voorburg Group News.

The website includes three primary types of papers: mini-presentation papers, sector papers, and revisited sector papers

The mini-presentation papers for prices, turnover, and classification present specific country's experience or practice on a given industry or part of an industry and are used to facilitate the discussion and exchange of knowledge and expertise.

The sector papers and revisited papers are the codification of the best practices in the development of prices, turnover, and classification for a given industry. Both the revisited papers and sector papers are considered as the "final" outcome of the Voorburg Group's development work for a particular sector. As industries and products change, the Group has updated previous sector papers so it is always good to consult the most recent version for a particular sector.

The Reference Documents tab on the website contains the Voorburg Group's Strategic Plan, the Content Development Framework that guides the development of Sector Papers as well as the development of new Guidance Papers on cross-cutting methodological issues, an updated Glossary, as well as international recommendations and manuals on national accounting and price measurement.

Bureau of the Voorburg Group

The organization and the planning of the annual meeting are done by the Bureau. The Bureau consists of a core group of members, the host of the last meeting and the host of the next meeting, as well as the Voorburg Group Secretary who is responsible for various logistical activities including taking notes at Bureau meetings, organizing Country Progress Reports, and providing logistical support for the Voorburg Group Co-Chairs.

As of October 2022 the members of the Bureau are:

Bonnie Murphy: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (Co-Chair)
Marcus Friden: Statistics Sweden (Co-chair)
Mathieu Thomassin: Statistics Canada (VG Secretary)
Dorothee Blang: Destatis, Germany
Mariagrazia Moschetta: Istat, Italy
Ariel Juarez: INEGI, Mexico
Moegi Inoue: Bank of Japan
Rohan Draper: Statistics Denmark
Christian Puchter: Statistics Austria
Craig Taylor: Office of National Statistics, UK
Ruth Vizner: Israel Central Bureau Of Statistics

Year organized

1986

Next meeting

The 38th meeting of the Voorburg Group on Service Statistics will be hosted by the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics (ICBS) and will be held solely as virtual meetings on March, 5, 7, 19 and 21, 2024. Details regarding the agenda are available at the following link. The agenda includes an industry issues paper for Education. Cross-cutting topics to be discussed include reoptimizing/updating samples for PPI including initial recruitment of reporting companies, the use of PPI time series of countries from which we import products/services as a proxy, production of a deflated index of turnover, innovative methods for capturing quality change, among other things. A collaborative guidance paper on SPPI and output compilation during economic shocks will also be presented.

Previous meetings

The Voorburg Group meets for one week every year. The previous meetings were held as follows:
1987 Voorburg, the Netherlands
1987 Stockholm, Sweden
1988 Wiesbaden, Germany
1989 Ottawa, Canada
1990 Paris, France
1991 Helsinki, Finland
1992 Williamsburg, United States of America
1993 Oslo, Norway
1994 Sydney, Australia
1995 Voorburg, the Netherlands
1996 Newport, Wales
1997 Copenhagen, Denmark
1998 Rome, Italy
1999 Christchurch, New Zealand
2000 Madrid, Spain
2001 Ôrebro, Sweden
2002 Nantes, France
2003 Tokyo, Japan
2004 Ottawa, Canada
2005 Helsinki, Finland
2006 Wiesbaden, Germany
2007 Seoul, South Korea
2008 Aguascalientes, Mexico
2009 Oslo, Norway
2010 Vienna, Austria
2011 Newport, Wales, U.K.
2012 Warsaw, Poland
2013 Tokyo, Japan
2014 Dublin, Ireland
2015 Sydney, Australia
2016 Zagreb, Croatia
2017 New Delhi, India
2018 Rome, Italy
2019 Paris, France
2020, Virtual, Hosted by Statistics Finland
2021, Virtual, Hosted by United States Bureau of Labor Statistics
2022 Virtual, Hosted by Statistics Canada

Participants

Experts in output and producer price indexes for the service industries. Among the countries and international organizations that have been represented at the Voorburg group meetings are:

National institutes
Albania: National Institute of Statistics
Australia: Australian Bureau of Statistics
Austria: Statistics Austria
Bosnia and Herzegovina: Agency for Statistics
Brasil: FundaÇâo Getulio Vargas (FGV)
Canada: Statistics Canada
Chile: Central Bank of Chile
China: National Bureau of Statistics of China
Croatia : Central Bureau of Statistics
Czech Republic: Statistical Office of the Czech Republic
Estonia: Statistics Estonia
Fiji: Fiji Bureau of Statistics
Finland: Statistics Finland
France: Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques (INSEE)
Germany: Federal Statistical Office of Germany - Destatis
Hungary: Central Statistical Office
India: Ministry of Commerce and Industry Central Statistical Office-Economic Statistics Division, Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade
Indonesia: Budan Pusat Statistik – Central Bureau of Statistics
Ireland: Central Statistics Office Ireland
Israel: Central Bureau of Statistics
Italy: Instituto Nazionale di Statistica
Japan: Japan Statistics Bureau; Bank of Japan
Korea (Republic of): Bank of Korea
Kosovo: Agency of Statistics
Latvia: Central Statistical Bureau of Latvia
Luxembourg: STATEC (National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg)
Malaysia: Statistics Malaysia
Malta: National Statistics Office
Mexico: Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía
Morocco: Haut Commissariat au Plan
Netherlands: Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek
New Zealand: Statistics New Zealand
Norway: Statistics Norway
Poland: Central Statistics Office of Poland
Portugal: Instituto Nacional de Estatistica
Serbia: Statistical Office of the Republic of Serbia
Singapore: Department of Statistics
Slovenia: Statistical Office of Republic of Slovenia
Slovakia: Statistical Office of the Slovak Republic
Spain: Instituto Nacional de Estadistica
Switzerland: Office Federal de la Statistique
Sweden: Statistics Sweden
Thailand: National Statistical Office
Turkey: Turkstat
United Kingdom: Office of National Statistics
United States: Bureau of the Census, Bureau of Economic Analysis, Bureau of Labor Statistics
Vietnam: General Statistical Office

International organizations
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)
European Union: Statistical Office of the European Communities (Eurostat)
Secretariat of the Pacific Community
International Monetary Fund (IMF): Statistics Department

Reports to the United Nations Statistical Commission (UNSC)

Note: Best practice papers for most of the ISIC industries are available on the Voorburg website at https://voorburggroup.org/

Last updated 2 December 2022


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