The future role of official statistics in the business data arena

Abstract

This paper aims at identifying the most promising avenues to maintain and possibly increase the relevance of Official Statistics in the competitive and globally interconnected business data arena. A successful approach should be based upon selective strategies with a strong cooperative attitude towards other institutional and private actors engaged in the production of business data. A Global Value Chain (GVC) approach, developed in the international business literature, is adopted here to identify possible strengths and quickness along all stages of the statistical production process set up and maintained by National Statistical Institutions (NSIs) in order to exploit the “value added” of data produced by Official statistics as compared to other data sources.

The adoption of a register based approach to increase both the efficiency and flexibility of statistical production processes, and more active data dissemination strategies finalised to reduce the gap between statistical data and real business information needs are identified as the two most promising avenues. More specifically, NSIs should keep a pivotal position within the business data eco-system not only as direct producers but also as providers of new data infrastructures such as classification schemes, consistency benchmarking services and data integration opportunities. Some concrete examples of high value added new business data developed in Italy are provided.