Page 266 - Special Topic Session (STS) - Volume 2

STS493 Irene S.
authentic data to fulfil its primary tasks and is supposed to share this
information with the other registers in the network. To enable this sharing and
re-use of information the network holds unique linking keys by which mutual
relations between the datasets can be established. Those keys and relations
provide interesting opportunities for CBS. Although CBS also has access to the
single sources (by law), it is the mutual relations and for example the linking to
the Statistical Business Register, that determines the real value of this system for
statistical production.

Figure 1: Basic registers and relations between them in the system of basic
administrations

The Trade Register (TR, owned by the Dutch Chamber Of Commerce, CoC,
part of the Department of Ministry of Economic Affairs, in Fig. 1 represented by
the icon “enterprises) for example has relations with the municipal basic
administration (inhabitants per municipality) via the social security number of
natural persons. A link with the basic administration of “Addresses of Buildings”
gives access to unique addresses and linking to “Salaries Labour relations
Benefits” enriches data sets with information on Wages, Labour- and social
security/welfare rates. Another unique identification number links the Trade
Register data also to the registers of the tax authorities. In addition to
government registers, in the last few years CBS has also started using business
records, for example, scanner data from supermarket checkouts to calculate the
Consumer Price Index and information concerning energy consumption from
energy companies. Nowadays it is impossible to imagine the production of
official statistics without the use of administrative data: for 17 statistical themes,
we contact over 75 holders of registrations to obtain over 200 data sources to
be used in official statistics production.

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