1

OECD Workshop on Business and Consumer Tendency Surveys, Rome, 19 September 2006

INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND TO WORKSHOP

2

Introduction and background to Workshop

To present work at the national and international levels following the last joint European Commission – OECD Workshop on International Development of Business and Consumer Tendency Surveys held in Brussels in November 2005.

To present the enhanced guidelines flowing out of the work of task forces that were discussed at the last joint Workshop.

Identify areas on more in-depth investigation leading up to the next joint Workshop that may be held in second half of 2007

3

Introduction and background to Workshop

Relevant work by OECD since the last joint Workshop – Denis WARD

Relevant work by European Commission since last joint Workshop – Nathalie Darnaut

4

Brussels meeting – November 2005

Hosted by the European Commission

Attended by around 90 delegates from 58 institutes in different regions of the world + users in the ECB and national central banks

Was a forum to discuss draft enhanced guidelines for business and consumer tendency surveys developed by task forces comprising national institutes and I/Os

Opportunity for national institutes to present and discuss relevant recent initiatives

5

Recent OECD work on BTS / COS Relevant work of the OECD’s Short-term Economic Statistics

Working Party (STESWP) – focus on quantitative statistics

– Creation of a revisions analytical database for key short-term economic statistics (including OECD CLI) – available at http://stats.oecd.org/mei/default.asp?rev=1

– Work of the task force on the use of administrative data for short-term economic statistics.

– Publication of the OECD Short-term Economic Statistics Timeliness Framework – available at www.oecd.org/std/research/timeliness

– Development of the Index of Services Production Manual

– Finalisation of the OECD Data and Metadata Reporting and Presentation Handbook

6

Recent OECD work on BTS / COS

OECD Short-term Economic Statistics Working Party (STESWP) – future work:

– Work with Eurostat on their initiative to develop guidelines on seasonal adjustment.

– Co-ordinated work with Eurostat TF recommendations on implementation of revised classifications (NACE Rev. 2). Possibility of new STESWP task force on time series linking.

– Forum to discuss national developments / innovations in the presentation of short-term indicators, their dissemination, and use of various analytical tools to broaden user community.

7

Recent OECD work on BTS / COS

Dissemination of BTS / COS in context of recently developed OECD Statistical Information System (SIS):

– The significantly expanded range of BTS / COS data disseminated by OECD (reported in 2004) is now more readily accessible to external users.

– Data are available through the new corporate OECD tools – MetaStore and OECD.stat.

– Larger range of data available free of charge in more user friendly (and more readily downloadable) format – available at http://stats.oecd.org/wbos/default.aspx?datasetcode=MEI_BTS_COS

– Summary metadata are also available – either linked to data or standalone – available at http://stats.oecd.org/mei/default.asp

8

BTS / COS data on website

9

BTS / COS metadata

10

Recent OECD work on BTS / COS

Other BTS / COS work – outlined in papers to be presented at this Workshop in Session 2:

– Standardised confidence indicators and zone aggregates – Gyorgy Gyomai

– CLIs for NMEs and recently new OECd Member countries – Ronny Nilsson.

11

Recent European Commission work on BTS / COS