Business Register Quality Improvement 18th International Roundtable on Business Survey Frames, 17 - 22 October 2004

Business Register data collection Sources surveys administrative sources Frequency annual monthly, bimonthly annual questionnaire addressed to complex and largest enterprises small and starting enterprises repeatedly and monitoring adm. annual business tax PAYE Finland’s Bank Customs quarterly: customer reg of tax administration monthly: VAT- and employer payment control data Opasmedia Trade Register (mergers etc) National Post company erityisesti vuosirytmi on kasannut töitä epätasaisesti (piirre) Tuula Viitaharju October, 2004

Goals of quality project revision of processes quality measurement documentation Tuula Viitaharju October, 2004

Quality project - goals / background revision of processes economic statistics need more real time BR data productivity should rise, resource problems quality measurement EU demands needs of national users documentation user needs transfer and extend of knowledge among BR personnel organisation of work, productivity Tuula Viitaharju October, 2004

Revision of processes: survey process Old practice: sending mass of paper questionnaires mainly in the beginning of the year checking and processing in BR took even 6 months plenty of checking as batch programs - hard phase in the annual work process some merger events were updated in BR with a delay of a year or more Tuula Viitaharju October, 2004

Revision of processes: survey process Revised practice: sending of paper questionnaires more frequently - smaller amounts at each time all round the year - smoothen workload shorter delay between response and its processing checking procedures for each group monthly phone profiling of largest re-structuring enterprises and of starting big enterprises monthly phone profiling was a very remarkable thing Tuula Viitaharju October, 2004

Revision of processes survey selection: hint of significant changes in certain variables causes, that unit will be selected hint may come via: media feedback from Statistics Finland administrative data: monthly wages and salaries, sales mergers from Trade Register or Tax Administration Finland’s Post address data Tuula Viitaharju October, 2004

Annual allocation of tasks, before the revision Tuula Viitaharju October, 2004

Change of timing of the annual survey process Tuula Viitaharju October, 2004

Main features in revision of processes Special practice for largest re-structuring cases continuous work on checking and on error situations some of checking procedures could be started and timed from on-line application Tuula Viitaharju October, 2004

Gains of the revision of processes easier to communicate with respondents respondents are more motivated to give information organisation of work, organisation of deputy duties better quality of collected information more real time data Tuula Viitaharju October, 2004

Speeding up of the completion of the annual statistical file Tuula Viitaharju October, 2004

New quality indicators coverage measurement quality control survey monitoring will be systematic and carried out annually Tuula Viitaharju October, 2004

Coverage measurement BR comparison against certain administrative sources data source missing from BR business tax 10,614 monthly payment control 6,465 pay as you earn 30,957 Result, missing from BR coverage: units 13,7 %, limited companies 1,0 % turnover 0,6 % wage bill 0,3 % Tuula Viitaharju October, 2004

Quality indicator of variables QUALITY SURVEY addressed to small enterprises (not belonging to ordinary annual surveys) stratified sampling measures quality of certain variables will be carried out annually Tuula Viitaharju October, 2004

Quality indicator of variables QUALITY SURVEY, results: NACE-code (Section level) 95 % NACE-code (5-digit level) 90 % municipality 94 % postal code 88 % address 71 % multi-location or not 99 % Tuula Viitaharju October, 2004

Results of quality survey Tuula Viitaharju October, 2004

Documentation Variable descriptions, 730 in all Process descriptions, 30 in all forms a ‘Handbook of Business Register’ for BR people and BR users use as training material available for everyone in Statistics Finland on Intranet will be kept up-to-date Tuula Viitaharju October, 2004

Structure of variable descriptions Title: name of the variable Content: explanation of the variable, possible code values, purpose of use Source: how and from where the value is derived, may exist more than one Processing: explanation how the variable is processed Processing rule(s): rules of the data system, which affect to the variable Tuula Viitaharju October, 2004

Example of variable description Title: oyr_omist_tyyppi Content: Owner type of legal unit. Owner types are: 1= Private domestic, 2= State 3= Municipality 4= Region of Åland 5= Foreign-owned 6= Other owner type Source: Tax Administration’s customer database (ASITK), Bank of Finland, Register of Enterprise Groups Processing: Inferred by default from the code of legal form. In type 5 foreign ownership is at least 50 per cent. This is used only for corporate units. For legal units which are subsidiaries of enterprise groups, ownership information is updated according to the parent of the group. Processing rule: A31.1 Processing rule for updating of the Tax Administration’s customer database, B62.4 Inference of owner type by means of enterprise group information, A34 Updating with the Bank of Finland data. Tuula Viitaharju October, 2004

Process descriptions 2 pages each: process flow chart and one page text Input processes, 15 key or sub-processes example: Updating by Finland’s Post business address data Processing, 9 key or sub-processes example: processing of intra-enterprise demographic information Output processes, 7 key or sub-processes example: creation and checking of the statistical file Tuula Viitaharju October, 2004

THANK YOU !