Page 13 - Special Topic Session (STS) - Volume 1

STS339 Irene Salemink et al.
so called stovepipes, in the sense that the individual statistic is produced as a
standalone process. The demand for integrated, consistent and coherent
statistical information however increases and working in a standalone manner
does not contribute to this demand, on the contrary. Due to the ever
increasing complexity of the organization of global, large, complex enterprise
groups, the difficulties to retrieve statistical data, the various entry points for
various business statistics (International Trade, SBS, STS, FATS, FDI), increased
availability and use of administrative sources, the complexity of small
enterprises comprising phenomena like outsourcing, the increased economic
role of the self-employed, the difficulties to describe everything correctly in
the Statistical Business Register and the subsequent compilation of statistical
data makes that none of the compilers of any business statistic alone can
oversee this system of dependencies as a whole. It takes a helicopter view to
oversee (at macro level) the increased links and dependencies between
enterprises and economic sectors.
How to deal with this increased complexity, the pressure to combine all
various data sources as efficiently and less burdensome as possible and still
release high quality frames and statistics on time?
A possible solution is to integrate all stages of the production process of
related business statistics and national accounts as part of a chain of statistical
products, using chain management to orchestrate both the process and the
outcome. The Statistical Business Register (SBR) is a crucial part of this chain
that starts with a coordinated population derived from the SBR. Therefore in
this approach the SBR is positioned as the backbone for all economic statistics
and plays a central role in their production.
In order to be able to execute decisions and effects of decisions in a
coordinated manner chain management and a culture of shared responsibility
between all partners in the chain are a prerequisite.

2. Chain Management
2.1 What is Chain Management?
Chain management is the coordination of the various statistical processes
i.e. the processing and designing of various statistical products from the
perspective of the whole chain. It comprises the whole set of management and
operating activities which aim for improving the cooperation of all actors in
the chain so that the result of this joint effort is optimal and transparent for all
users.
The chain is designed as a set of links between processes. SN defined these
links as so called “steady states” in the Business Architecture (BA). Chain
management concerns the links of the whole statistical production process
from observation to publication.

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