Page 177 - Contributed Paper Session (CPS) - Volume 3

CPS1985 Markus Z.
data sources could even replace survey data. But in general, the assumption
in the European Statistical System (ESS) is that new digital data will be an
additional data source and official statistical products will be multiple source
products. Linked survey, administrative as well as non-traditional data will be
the basis for official statistical products in the future.
Besides legal and ethical challenges, the access to the often privately held
digital data sources as well as to the necessary skills for developing the
algorithm in the new digital statistic production could be a central limitation
for NSIs (ESS 2017a).
With the Big Data Roadmap of the ESS a lot of initiatives started in the year
2015. With the ESSnet Big Data 2016-2018 eight projects were finalized in May
2018 (https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/cros/content/essnet-big-data_en) .The
following ESSnet Big Data 2018-2020 has started on 1st November 2018. The
Federal Statistical Office of Germany (Destatis) is engaged in these initiatives.
Furthermore, Destatis ran the project ‘Smart business cycle statistics (SBCS)’
financed by Eurostat. This project tried to use satellite images for describing
the change of economic activities over the time. Besides this, Destatis works
on different projects by using mobile phone data. One result of these activities
is that NSIs probably will use more semi-finished statistical products coming
from private data producer in the future.
This paper is focusing on the experience with the project SBCS in respect
of using semi-finished statistical products for official statistics.

2. Smart business cycle statistics
In 2017, Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union, published
the call for tender ‘Smart Statistics’. The aim of the call was to get ‘Services for
developing "Proofs of Concept (PoC)" of leveraging data within an extended
Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystem for the production of smart statistics in
Commission policy areas.’ A consortium of SOGETI Luxembourg, a data
consulter, the Jožef Stefan Institute from Slovenia and the Federal Statistical
Office of Germany (Destatis) won the competition of this tender and conducts
the project since March 2018 until March 2019. The Jožef Stefan Institute did
the two PoCs ‘Smart mobility for Smart Cities’ and ‘Smart labour market
statistics’. Destatis was responsible for the PoC ‘Smart business cycle statistics’.
SOGETI organised the administrative frame of the project and the ‘Workshop
on Trusted Smart Statistics: policymaking in the age of the IoT’ as part of the
project in Germany in January 2019
(https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/cros/content/workshop-trusted-smart-
statistics-policymaking-age-iot-0_en) . More detailed articles of the three
PoCs are in preparation.
The main idea of the PoC ‘Smart business cycle statistics (SBCS)’ was to use
sensor data coming from satellite and flyover observations for producing

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