Seminar Description

Venue: Erin Room, Dublin Castle

Date: 22nd February 2010

The Central Statistics Office has for many years now been using administrative data to broaden the range, scope and depth of analysis that it can provide to support evidence based policy making. The seminar highlighted some of the achievements to date in this domain and hopefully provided a focus for further developments. The recently published NSB strategy highlighted the need to focus on the development of administrative data holdings and to accelerate the development of a coherent "whole-system" approach to official statistics that links CSO generated statistics with administrative data holdings.

The broad objectives of the seminar were

• To promote enhanced engagement from stakeholders in the Irish Statistical System by providing concrete examples of the benefits that exploitation of administrative data and matching/linking of sources can provide;
• To inform stakeholders of current activities and the potential benefits to them (e.g. greater range of statistics, more in-depth analysis, reduced respondent burden, more timely statistics ) from these activities;
• To highlight what can be achieved when the necessary statistical infrastructure (unique identifiers, postal codes etc.) is in place right across the system.

The seminar program was

• Opening remarks - Padraig Dalton (CSO)
• New Social statistics through data linkage - Adrian Redmond / Berni Dunne (CSO)
• Production of business statistics using administrative data - Caitriona O Brien (CSO)
• Northern Ireland Neighbourhood Information Service (NINIS) - Dr David Marshall (NISRA)
• National Statistics Board Perspective - Dr Pat O Hara (NSB)
• An added dimension to Official Statistics - John Dunne (CSO)
• Concluding remarks and discussion - Padraig Dalton (CSO)

The target audience comprised of key stakeholders in the Irish Statistical System: data users and data providers (including representative bodies, survey respondents and Public Sector organisations, particularly those on the policy side, with relevant administrative data holdings).

There were over 100 participants with only a handful of those coming from outside the Public Sector and research communities. There was also an international presence with colleagues from the ONS (Office for National Statistics) and NISRA (Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency) participating.

Presentations

› Opening Remarks - ADC Seminar (PDF 256KB)

› New Social Statistics through data Linkage (PDF 520KB)

› Production of Business statistics using administrative data (PDF 139KB)

› Northern Ireland Neighbourhood Information Service (NINIS) (PDF 6.2MB)

› National Statistics Board Perspective (PDF 920KB)

› An added dimension to Official Statistics (PDF 107KB)

› Concluding remarks and discussion (PDF 82KB)