n Italy 1996.docx

1、n Italy 1996Evolution of Census Statistics on Enterprises in Italy 1996-2006: from the Traditional Census to a Register of Local Units.Monica Consalvi, Luigi Costanzo, Danila Filipponi (Istat)1. IntroductionIn ten years, from 1996 to 2006, Istat has completely reformed the production of census stati

2、stics on enterprises of industry and services. In 1993, the European Commission required the member States to realise business registers based on administrative data, to be used for the yearly production of harmonised official statistics on the whole population of non-agricultural enterprises, where

3、as the economic Censuses are normally taken every ten years.In 1996 Istat started the project of the Italian Business Register (BR), named Statistical Register of Active Enterprises (ASIA). ASIA has been developed through the statistical integration of different administrative sources, covering the

4、entire population of enterprises of industry and services, other minor archives available (covering particular sectors), and structural business statistics currently produced by Istat. In order to assess the reliability of the methodology applied and to test the data quality, a special “mid-term” Ce

5、nsus was taken in 1998, whose results substantially confirmed the validity of ASIA as a production process as well as in terms of data produced.So, the Census of 2001 (CIS) could take advantage of the support of ASIA, that made possible important innovations in the survey technique. Moreover, the co

6、mparison between the BR and the Census made possible to measure the coverage of both sources without performing a post-enumeration survey, and even to identify the missing units and to integrate them in the Census dissemination file. The next step was filling the gap between Census and the BR with t

7、he production of territorial data on enterprises through the implementation inside ASIA of a register of local units (ASIA-UL). To build and update this new feature has been organised a yearly survey on the local units of large enterprises (IULGI). This paper provides an overview of the evolution pr

8、ocess that led from the traditional enumeration of economic activities to an integrated system of statistical production, that can be defined as a continuous Census since it provides every year statistical information on the territorial distribution of economic activities and the employment, so far

9、available through the Census every decade.2. The development of the Italian Business Register (ASIA)2.1 The experimental phaseIn Italy, a significant know how on the use of administrative archives for statistical purposes started to develop since the end of the 80s, when several experimental studies

10、, inside and out the Istat, explored the technical feasibility to set up a statistical business register. In 1994, even to comply with the requirements of the EU, Istat opened a complex project in order to implement an Italian BR, whose first step was the production of a feasibility study. The workg

11、roup in charge defined its agenda as follows:a. Definition of a metadata framework;b. Study of the main available administrative archives (definition of units and characters, classifications used, coverage, maintenance and updating procedures);c. Development of a “metadata translator”, i.e. a set of

12、 rules to convert the administrative data into statistical information, by identifying the statistically-relevant units among the legally-relevant ones;d. Set up of a robust methodology to estimate/validate the characters of the identified statistical units.The acronym ASIA (in Italian, Archivio Sta

13、tistico delle Imprese Attive) was adopted and the development of the project was outlined in three major steps. The first phase, started in 1995, consisted in creating a prototype of the BR for three Italian provinces, in order to test the methodological solutions to be adopted for the integration o

14、f administrative archives. For this purpose, different linkage procedures and different methodologies for the imputation of missing data were experimented, and a set of rules for checking the attributes of statistical units was implemented. The second phase of the project consisted in extending the

15、experiment to the entire national territory. A first release of ASIA, as a result of the logical and physical integration of administrative and statistical sources, was issued in 1996 (t) with reference to the year t-2 (1994). The construction process of the BR was then completed in 1997, by perform

16、ing a quality control of the previous releases: that year microdata from ASIA, referring to 1995, were disseminated for the first time.Finally, in the third phase, carried out in 1998-1999, the BR was validated through a field survey, with a special Intermediate Census.2.2 The 1996 Intermediate Cens

17、usThe Intermediate Census had a double aim. As usual, it was a survey to supply territorial information on the economic structure of the Country but, at the same time, it was also a general check of the information about the active units recorded in the BR. The direct survey regarded all the medium

18、and large enterprises of industry and services recorded in the BR, and among the smaller ones only those with discordances between different administrative sources (mainly in the number of employees or in the activity status). All the other smaller units were simply checked through a desk review. Th

19、e questionnaires were sent by mail and, in case of missing response, the units were contacted by phone or directly on field by interviewers.The questionnaires were partly personalised with pre-printed information drawn from the BR. The enterprises were only asked to confirm or to correct the informa

20、tion in case of variations and/or errors, if any. Also the date of the possible variation was to be reported.Compared to the traditional census, this organisation implied some advantages: a) A higher coverage rate (about 95%), thanks to the use of administrative sources; b) Lesser costs and lesser b

21、urden for the respondents, thanks to the innovation of the survey technique (the units surveyed were only a 15% of the entire universe, and they had to answer less questions); c) A shortening of the data processing and, then, a better timeliness in the data dissemination (the final output was releas

22、ed at the end of October 1998, just about one year after the surveys beginning).To evaluate the outcome of the Intermediate Census was carried out a specific survey, showing the overall reliability of the BR (see tab. 1). However, the Census highlighted two main errors in the BR: a) An over-coverage

23、 error, i.e. the inclusion of units recognized as not belonging to the observation field. This was generally due to errors in coding the economic activity (especially for self-employers and enterprises without employees, as they are not covered by all the available sources.b) An under-coverage of so

24、me economic sector, such as construction, transportation and trading intermediation.Moreover, table 1 reports the discordance rates for the main characters of the statistical units, between the BR and the Census survey (taking into account that part of the error is just due to the time reference lag

25、).Tab. 1 - Concordance and discordance by main characters of statistical units between the BR and the 1996 Intermediate CensusCharacters ConcordanceDiscordanceAbsolute valuesPercentage valuesAbsolute valuesPercentage valuesTotalOf which due to time lagActivity status at December 31, 1995340,80893.62

26、3,4716.4n.a.Economic activity code322,84488.641,43411.41.9Enterprise name346,86595.217,4134.82.8Address288,27879.176,00020.96.7Juridical status350,45396.213,8253.81.9Number of employees317,90594.020,3516.0n.a.2.3 Data dissemination and the re-engineering of the BR Information SystemIn December 1998

27、the Intermediate Census data were disseminated via Internet, through a Data Warehouse. For the first time users were allowed to create by themselves tables comparing the 1996 data with those from the previous Censuses (up to 1971). The advantages of this tool of data dissemination were a higher info

28、rmation detail, the customisable elaborations, a database that could be queried via Internet in real time, and free access/download at any level. The Data Warehouse represented the pivot of the Census dissemination plan.This dissemination approach required a re-engineering of the BR Information Syst

29、em through the realisation of a relational database. The information system contains the historical information of the statistical units since 1996 i.e. the values of their main characters over the years. The relational database was realised in 1999, with the logical and conceptual study of the data

30、base and the physical realisation of its first functions, navigation, visualisation, updating. In the database some metadata were also included: the procedure used for character attribution (imputation model, estimation, directly from survey, etc.); the production process (survey, integration of adm

31、inistrative registers); the source of the data; whether changes occurring in the period are variations or adjustments; reliability of data (with reference to the generating process and sources).After the first set-up of the register, in 1999 began the development of a multiple updating procedure. Si

32、nce recorded units do not have the same statistical weight, the updating procedure of ASIA was differentiated by size classes. Simplifying, we can say that the small units (up to 9 employees), corresponding approximately to the 95% of the recorded units, are yearly updated by the integration process of administrative sources; the characters of the medium sized units (10 to 249 employees) are updated directly from statistical sources (SBS/STS, that collect the needed data through an additional form) and the