Page 322 - Invited Paper Session (IPS) - Volume 1

IPS155 Emily W. et al.
statistics, INEXDA will benefit from national and international experiences to
shape the outcome of this work stream. In the context of INEXDA, and
following up on a survey of the Working Group of Statistical information
Management (WGSIM) of the European System of Central Banks (ESCB) on
national central banks’ (NCBs) approaches to granting external researchers
access to confidential data for research purposes, Emily Witt and Jannick
Blaschke (ECB) conducted interviews with several central banks
(Oesterreichische Nationalbank, Deutsche Bundesbank, Banco de España,
Banque de France, Banca d’Italia, De Nederlandsche Bank, Banco de Portugal,
Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey, Bank of England, European Central
6
Bank) and Eurostat. The result is an overview of selected NCBs’ and Eurostat’s
approaches to providing access to non-published granular data for research
7
purposes that complements other work in this area.
Besides international experiences, national experiences are helpful in
identifying the best practices with regard to access to microdata. For example,
the Deutsche Bundesbank recently provided an overview of the microdata
access procedures used, where three different user groups of microdata have
been identified (internal analysts, internal researchers, and external
researchers). The paper (Schönberg (2018)) described different access modes
for each user group in detail. A unit called Internal Service for Micro Data
Analysis handles internal analysts’ data access requests following a multilevel
approach (modelled after the European System of Central Banks (ESCB)
standard approach).
At the end of August 2018, INEXDA will likely start a working group
focusing on best practices on how data users could be allowed to access
granular data once they have completed the accreditation process and have
signed all relevant contracts. The task of this working group is to take stock of
existing models of data provision used by INEXDA members. Possible topics
may include:
• data access via secure access facility and/or remote access (eg
technical design and specifications of limitations);
• anonymisation of methodologies and tools;
• provision of services to external researchers (eg provision of standard
or ad hoc data sets, linkage of various data sets, upload of external
data sets, access to licensed data sets);
• provision of analytical tools and allowing/facilitating code sharing.

6 The participating interviewees agreed to share the results with INEXDA members and guests.
7 For example, the “Guidelines for the assessment of research entities, research proposals and
access facilities” (Luxembourg, November 2016) from the European Commission, Eurostat,
Directorate B: Methodology; Corporate statistical and IT services, Unit B-1: Methodology and
corporate architecture, or the results from the FP7 project “Data without Boundaries” (DwB, see
https://www.facebook.com/dwbproject).
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