NSB 2008/2/2
Venue: Department of the Taoiseach
Date: February 11 2008, 11:00-14:00
Mr. Brendan Walsh[1] chaired the meeting. The following members also attended: Ms. Mary Doyle, Mr. Danny McCoy, Mr. Michael McGrath, Ms. Pat O’Hara, Mr. Gerry O’Hanlon
CSO Assistant Director General Mr. Bill Keating also attended. Mr. Gerry Brady acted as Secretary. Apologies were received from Mr. Paul Sweeney and Mr. Con Lucey.
These were agreed without amendment. In relation to matters arising, there was a discussion on what progress had been made on the introduction of postcodes into Ireland. It was agreed that this topic should be a substantive item on the agenda of the next NSB meeting. Presentations on the new small output areas and on spatial location TICodes should be arranged.
There was also a discussion on the progress being made by the cross-Department business identifier group. Both the postcodes and the business identifier projects may need to make a valuation of the less tangible user and data benefits. There was willingness in the business community to support these two initiatives but it is essential, given the costs of changing systems, that the right solutions are identified at the outset and that these solutions are robust into the future.
A new statistical unit has been set-up in the Department of Social and Family Affairs. A CSO statistician has been appointed as senior statistician on secondment to head up the new unit. A number of Departments have requested the secondment of CSO statisticians (Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform; Department of Health and Children; and the Office of the Minister for Children).
The delay in the confirmation of 2011 as the year of the next census is complicating the preparations for the next census. A decision will be required from Government over the next few weeks if preparations for the pilot and for the census are not to be seriously delayed.
The CSO has signed a 5-year contract with SAS to upgrade its installation in the CSO through the introduction of the SAS Business Intelligence (SAS BI) product.
The CSO met recently with the ESRI to examine how the ESRI could make greater and more effective use of CSO data in pursuing its research agenda. There is an increasing need for research on demographic issues, and for co-ordination in the development of environmental and energy statistics. The CSO and Forfás have agreed to jointly conduct the Research & Development survey previously undertaken by Forfás.
The CSO will host a Business Statistics Seminar on February 26th in Dublin. The seminar will highlight some new work that the CSO has been involved in, and also work being done by outside researchers using CSO data. A thematic report on Family Businesses will be launched prior to the seminar.
Drafts of chapters 1-4 were circulated for the meeting. Chapter 4 contains the business plans. Some of the new initiatives arise as a result of the NSB strategy and the NSB survey of user needs.
There is a need for new CSO surveys in areas such as crime and victimisation, adult education, travel, and time use. Statistics on enterprise demography and monitoring of the statistical response burden on business are also requirements.
The document presented a summary of the unmet needs expressed by users in the recent survey. Needs in relation to the further development of the CSO website and for more availability of small areas and administrative county statistics were the most frequently mentioned unmet needs. These will be taken into account in the next NSB strategy.
The Board proposed a number of topics for inclusion as focal points in the next statistics strategy. They included the following topics:
Environment, sustainable development, and climate change;Electronic dissemination and website development;Small areas data capture and dissemination; More research into demographic trends particularly in relation to the consequences of increasing life expectancy and migration;New CSO surveys;Unique business identifiers and the statistical response burden.
The next meeting will be in the Department of the Taoiseach in Dublin on Monday 21st April 2008 at 11 a.m. The following meeting was provisionally set for June 10th 2008 in CSO Cork.
[1] Professor emeritus Economics Department, UCD.