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Electronic reporting in Electronic reporting in Statistics Norway Statistics Norway

27th Voorburg group meeting

Warsaw, Poland

1-5 October, 2012

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Content of presentation

• History behind electronic questionnaires (IDUN Portal)

• IDUN – some technical facts and functionality

• Development of electronic reporting (EDI) 2002-2012

• Consequences of EDI

• History behind electronic reporting (EDI) of annual accounts

• Development of EDI from annual accounts

• Consequences of EDI from annual accounts

• Future plans

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• Energy and environmental statistics

• Natural resources and environmental statistics

• Income and wage statistics

• Price statistics• Labour market

statistics

• Population statistics• Health statistics• Social welfare

statistics• Education statistics

• Primary industry statistics

• Transport, tourism and ICT statistics

• Construction and service statistics

• Manufacturing and R&D statistics

• National accounts• Financial markets

statistics• Public finance• Financial corporations• Accounting statistics• External trade statistics

• Public economics• Environmental

economics• Macroeconomics• Microeconomics• Energy economics• Social and

demographic research

Economics, energy and the

environment statistics

Socialstatistics

Industry statistics

National accounts and

financial statistics

Research

The Board

Director general

• Staff – administration• International secretariat• Finance management• Development cooperation• Property management• Human resources

• Staff• Information and documentation• Publishing

• IT infrastructure• Statistical methods and standards• Data collection systems• Statistics systems • Communication systems

• Statistical populations• Data collection methods • Data collection• Interviews• Support services• Data collection coordination

Communications

Administration

IT and statistical methods

Data collection

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History - IDUN

• IDUN: Information and data exchange with the business environment

• 2000: IDUN project was established in SSB

• 2001: First pilot – limited scale.

• 2002: New pilot, larger scale

• 2003: > 50 per cent of surveys directed towards businesses included a possibility for electronic reporting

• 2004: All ”business-surveys” included possibility for EDI (IDUN)

• 2005-2010: Efforts put into integrating IDUN with Altinn. Altinn is the electronic portal used by other public institutions ( tax. authorities, other register authorities)

• 2011 – 2015 IDUN is phased out

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IDUN – some few technical facts

• Metadata is defined by the division responsible for survey

• Data are registered in the metadatabase by division for data collection

• The electronic questionnaire is generated through this database.

• IDUN is (therefore) not a tool for questionnaire designing

• Interactive communication with the respondent is not possible

• Front page is standard for all (business) surveys

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IDUN - functionality

• Respondents get access to IDUN through a user ID and password for each survey

• Guideline is available for each survey (if necessary)

• Respondent can change basic information (adress etc.) directly in the questionnaire

• Respondent can move forwards and backwards in the questionnaire

• Respondent can”Jump” directly from the first page to the last page if the unit has no information for the survey (e.g. no activity, wrong NACE code)

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IDUN - functionality

• Sum up functions ( e.g. percentages)

• Logic controlls:

1. Red warnings: Answer is unacceptable. Respondent can not move on to the next page or send the questionnaire

2. Yellow warnings: Answer should be considered once more by the respondent but can be send

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IDUN - functionality

• Questionnaire includes a box at the last page where comments can be written

• Same questionnaire can be send more than once in case of mistakes

• Respondent receives an electronic receipt after the questionnaire has been send

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Development of electronic reporting in SSB2005-2011

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011

Calendar year

Per

cen

t

10

Selected statistics, first reference year before 2002

0 %

10 %

20 %

30 %

40 %

50 %

60 %

70 %

80 %

90 %

100 %

2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011

Reference year

Pe

r c

en

t

SBS, construction

SBS,business services

SBS, wholesale/retail trade

Turnoverindex, business services

SPPI, architectural services

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Selected statistics, first reference period 2005-2007

0 %

20 %

40 %

60 %

80 %

100 %

120 %

2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011

Reference year

pe

r c

en

t SPPI, legal services

SPPI, cleaning activites

SPPI, management consulting

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Selected statistics with first reference period 2008 or later

0 %

20 %

40 %

60 %

80 %

100 %

120 %

2008 2009 2010 2011

Reference year

per

cen

t

SPPI, civil engineering

SPPI, technical testing

SPPI, advertising agencies

SPPI, mediarepresentation

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Consequences

• Less resources were needed for opening post, scanning and verfication

• New tasks were borned: IDUN-support for respondents,

creation of electronic questionnaires, testing and approval of questionnaires before each reference period

• SSB is still obliged to offer paper questionnaire = increased workingburden for designing new questionnaires

• Time for package and cost of postage have decreased after cutting out paper questionnaire in the first sending

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Consequences

• Exceeding resources (especially in the first years) were used for supporting other divisions in SSB by editing data and for support service

• Better quality of reported data ? We do not know for sure.

• Hopefully – perceived responseburden has decreased

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Electronic reporting of annual accounts

• Project was established by the tax authorities in the late 90’ties. SSB and The Brønøysund register centre participated in the project

• SSB did also consider scanning of these data, but gave it up

• A common database for this matter for all divisions in SSB was established between 1999-2001. Purpose: Exploiting the expected significant increase of accounting data, independent of statistics, divisions and samples

• 2001: SSB receives the first electronic reported annual accounts. Units report electronically to the tax authorities, who passes on the data to SSB

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Development of electronic reporting of annual accounts

0

30 000

60 000

90 000

120 000

150 000

180 000

210 000

240 000

270 000

300 000

330 000

360 000

390 000

420 000

450 000

2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010

Reference year

Nu

mb

er Total no. in the NO base

Number electronic reported

Number manually registrated

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Development of electronic reporting of annual accounts

0,0

10,0

20,0

30,0

40,0

50,0

60,0

70,0

80,0

90,0

100,0

2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011*

Referenceyear

Per

cen

t

Electronic reporting, per cent

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A practical example of reduced response burden • Residual sample, SBS. Consist of units, where we have no

administrative data sources for turnover. Must be collected by a survey.

Residual sample, SBS - no. of units

0

10 000

20 000

30 000

40 000

50 000

60 000

2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011

Reference years

No

. o

f u

nit

s

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Consequences

• Decreased repsonse burden. Units reporting electronically only have to send their annual account to one institution (the Tax Authorities).

• Manual registration has been reduced by 90 per cent, measured by number of units. Some of the exceeding resources have been used on new tasks (IDUN-support, edition of data)

• Quality of accounting based statistics (e.g. SBS) has increased, due to a higher coverage rate of accounts.

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Future plans

• Transferring questionnaires from IDUN to a new portal – Altinn II

• Altinn II is already today used by other central public institutions as the portal for electronic reporting

• Cutting number of surveys automatically including a paper questionnaire in the first sending

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Advantages – Altinn II

• Respondents will have one common portal for sending electronic information to public institutions

• Increased functionality: Interactive communication, possibility of sending data directly from the respondents own systems, respondents have access to previous surveys, same data can be send to several institutions in one operation

• Easier to change questionnaire design (through Microsoft Info Path)

• The Brønøysund register Centre is responsible for running and managing Altinn II. SSB will save costs