United Nations Statistical Commission
Overview 52nd Session (2021) Side events
YouTube live: Interactive and digitally-enabled statistical standards and classifications
Presentations
The serviceability of statistical standards for economic statistics and classifications such as the System of National Accounts (SNA), Balance of Payments Manual (BPM), Government Finance Statistics Manual (GFSM), Monetary Finance Statistics Manual (MFSM), recommendations and guidelines for labour market statistics, International Standard Industrial Classification (ISIC) and Central Product Classification (CPC) can be enhanced by converting these publications into digitally-enabled and interactive tools with cross references that facilitate navigation from one part of the system of economic statistics to the other. With the use of digital techniques for the system of economic statistics, it is expected that the joint update of the standards of the system will be facilitated and the system of economic statistics will enhance its capability to provide responsive guidance to rapidly occurring real-world changes. At the same time, a digital vocabulary of the main standards of economic statistics will allow for digital integration with well-established library and other vocabularies, taxonomies and ontologies, thus improving cross-disciplinary search capabilities of digitized documents. This cross-referencing capability will reinforce the role of the standards of economic statistics in informing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
As part of its work on improving the way the international macroeconomic standards are communicated and made accessible to both data users and national account compilers, the Intersecretariat Working Group on National Accounts (ISWGNA) has identified the digitalization of the SNA and related manuals, handbooks, and guides as a workstream. At the same time, the Friends of the Chair Group on Economic Statistics has recognized the need for advancing the use of innovative technologies and approaches for cross referencing and navigation between the various statistical standards for economic statistics and classifications. To facilitate the development of interactive and digitally-enabled statistical standards for economic statistics and classifications, the official statistics community needs to embrace new technologies and approaches to improve the quality, integration, accessibility and use, not only of data and metadata, but also how the structure and semantical cross-references methodological standards and statistical classifications frameworks are established. For this purpose, The joint ISWGNA/BOPCOM task team on communication established a sub-task team on interactive and digitally-enabled statistical standards for economic statistics and classifications to develop for existing and updated macroeconomic accounting standards, related macroeconomic manuals and international classifications:
- Digital and interactive cross-referencing standards that allow for easy navigation across the manuals.
- Network or concentric topology using tools such as poolparty and graph-powered software for the system of manuals to avoid overlaps and conflicts between the various methodological prescriptions to facilitate the drafting of manuals.
- Metadata modelling and conceptual classification management.
- Applications using the topology to facilitate cross-references across statistical manuals.
- A platform as a collaborative environment to support the statistical update of the system of economic statistics, exchange of information, innovative ideas and general knowledge across a target population of experts, professionals or the public at large.
This event will present examples of the work that has been done to create interactive statistical classifications and an SDG taxonomy using innovative cross-referencing and navigation technologies and approaches.
Registration details:
Registration for this event has ended. If you had registered and did not receive a meeting invitation, please email us at SNA@un.org.