National Statistics Board
Minutes
Venue: Central Statistics Office, Cork
Date: Thursday 2nd October, 2014
Information Seminar
The formal Board meeting was preceded by a short information seminar where Pat O’Hara (Chairperson) spoke to CSO staff members about the role of the Board and the importance of independence and objectivity in the production of official statistics. The seminar also heard about two important administrative data projects that are currently underway in the CSO: the development of an alternative Residential Property Index (Niall O’Hanlon) and the compilation of labour market flows from Live Register data (Catalina Gonzalez).
Board meeting
The following members attended:
Dr. Patricia O’Hara (Chairperson), Mr. Tom Geraghty, Ms. Rowena Dwyer, Dr. Helen Johnston, Mr. John Callinan, and Mr. Pádraig Dalton.
Apologies were received from Mr. Gerard O’Neill and Mr. John McCarthy
Mr. Donal Kelly acted as Secretary.
Item 1: Minutes of July 30 2014 (NSB 2014/5/2)
The minutes of the previous meeting were accepted without amendment.
Item 2: Director General’s progress report (NSB 2014/5/3)
The Director General welcomed the Board to the Cork office and briefed the Board on a number of recent developments within CSO and at European level.
Move to ESA 2010 and BPM6 |
Government Finance Statistics and Institutional Sector Accounts were published in July, completing the move of all CSO quarterly macro-economic results to the ESA 2010 and the IMF Balance of Payments Manual version 6 (BPM6) standards. The Quarter 2 2014 Quarterly National Accounts and BOP results were released on September 18th and from the feedback and queries received, the indication is that the effects of the new standards on the statistics are fairly well understood by users at this stage. |
System of Health Accounts |
Meetings between the CSO and the HSE health domains on how administrative data could be used to meet SHA requirements are continuing, and CSO commenced data collection from private health insurers in August 2014 under a statutory instrument. The first transmission of SHA results to Eurostat are scheduled for Quarter 2 2015 on a voluntary basis, with transmission of SHA required under regulation by April 2016. A 2015 transmission is dependent on the continued commitment of all partners in the project to the time lines in the project plan. |
Environment Statistics |
The second publication of quarterly Building Energy Ratings (BER) statistics was released on September 18th with results for Quarter 2 2014. Results for Quarter 3 2014 will be published in early December. The BER release is based on detailed data available from SEAI on domestic properties. |
Framework Regulation for Business Statistics (FRIBS)
|
Dialog between national statistical institutes and Eurostat is continuing around the proposed FRIBS regulation. Ireland (CSO) presented a paper at DGINS[1] on September 24-25, 2014 in Riga on the issue of "Global Value Chains" and emphasised the importance of ensuring that national data is consistent first, before any consideration can be given to microdata exchange. CSO is continuing to work in collaboration with other member states to ensure that its reservations around the FRIBS regulation are taken on board by Eurostat. |
SIMSTAT[2] |
For the next meeting ESSC meeting of Directors General (in November 2014), a plan of-next steps for the SIMSTAT project has been requested as some member states consider this to be a high-risk project with uncertain benefits that needs to be managed carefully. The next steps will include a more detailed business case that identifies the significant risks of moving to a single flow system. A cost\benefit analysis has also been requested by member states, as has the building in of clear stop-go decisions gates to the project. The CSO has recommended that consideration also be given in the business case, to the growing requirements around the measurement of globalisation (along with risk identification and cost / benefit analysis). |
Census |
The next census will be held on the 24th April 2016 and will be run as a 'no change' census. The Census Project Board has been established and is due to have its first meeting shortly; it will be chaired by Michael Connolly (Senior Statistician). The project charter, project communications plan and milestones have been forwarded to the SMC. CACI UK Ltd. have been awarded the contract for the provision of data capture services on similar basis to 2011 following an open tendering process and have already begun work on the project. |
Household Survey Development Project |
The HSD project team is currently assessing the responses received to the tender for outsourcing of the Computer Assisted Telephone Interviewing for the QNHS (Labour Force Survey). It is expected that a preferred bidder will be identified during October. Development work on the new QNHS questionnaire is ongoing and two technical tests of the new QNHS questionnaire have been completed, with more to follow during 2015. |
The Board discussed the ongoing work on the System of Health (SHA) accounts and welcomed the progress being made so far. The DG also noted the forthcoming Irish Health Survey and the role of the embedded statistician working in the Department of Health. The Board also discussed the extensive regulatory demands for more Environmental statistics and the need for CSO to make more progress in this area.
There was a detailed discussion of the FRIBS regulation and the SIMSTAT project and the ongoing interaction between the CSO and Eurostat around these two projects. While acknowledging that the FRIBS regulation has some potentially positive elements, such as a reduction in response burden, the Director General noted that countries needed to achieve consistency in their own enterprise data before they could consider the possibility of plugging other countries data in to their own systems.
Item 3: Update on CSO resources (NSB 2014/5/4)
The Director General provided an update on the current CSO budgetary and staffing situation, and noted that the forthcoming budget would bring clarity to the funding situation for 2015.
The need for the CSO to invest in areas such as the Administrative Data Centre, statistical methodology, environmental statistics and corporate governance were discussed. In particular the Board highlighted the need to invest in the Administrative Data Centre and in new data analytic skills.
Item 4: NSB Strategy - firstdraft (NSB 2014/5/5)
The Board discussed a first draft of the Board’s strategy and made a number of recommendations about the style and content of the document.
The Board also discussed the publication of the document.
The next meeting of the Board will take place in the Department of the Taoiseach on Thursday November 27th 2014.