Item 3.1.4 of the Agenda SODI: Progress made and next steps Bengt-Åke Lindblad & Leonhard Maqua, Unit B3 13 & 14 October 2008

SODI Task Force As of June 2008, 13 countries are members and have committed themselves to work on SODI (ECB and OECD are observers) Review progress and discuss issues that have been identified when starting to provide data for SODI A limited number of countries work actively 13 & 14 October 2008 IT Directors Group

SODI IT Infrastructure Tools produced and at disposal of Member States under EUPL SDMX converter Data Structure Wizard Reference architecture Tools developed for use in Eurostat’s environment Requestor (handles Pull mechanism) Database loader Publisher Tools developed for SDMX reference metadata Reference Metadata Template Reference Metadata Loader Reference Metadata Editor Reference Metadata/Extractor/Query Formulator 13 & 14 October 2008 IT Directors Group

Deployment Situation The SODI environment and related tools are installed on the server infrastructure of Eurostat All PEEI datasets have been defined in SODI SODI requires currently parallel sending Two MS sending SODI data regularly for a subset of datasets The SODI environment has been extended to allow transmission of reference metadata Up to now no metadata transmissions 13 & 14 October 2008 IT Directors Group

Issues raised by SODI A data sharing environment like SODI makes the statistical process more transparent: Difference between national concepts and procedures (for example, for seasonal adjustment) and the European ones Change of the role of the Eurostat production units: Focus less on statistical production and more on harmonisation of concepts and methods as well as quality assessment. Data sharing in the ESS requires systematic coordination with other organisations for the maintenance of shared structural metadata The need to produce data twice The future question to the NSIs is, whether they really need to produce data twice, once for the national publication and once for Eurostat. The long-term solution should be a harmonisation of the national concepts with the European ones. 13 & 14 October 2008 IT Directors Group

Next Steps Consolidate SODI: a vehicle for moving towards a modern way of data sharing, using the SDMX architecture and extending beyond the ESS To identify and follow-up on opportunities: use of SODI in different statistical domains, especially domains where international organisations share data which are sent by Member States to Eurostat. Publication policies: reflect on the publication policies for the PEEIs and the interaction with the technical possibilities offered by SODI. 13 & 14 October 2008 IT Directors Group

Member States are asked To take note of the work in progress; To comment on the issues 13 & 14 October 2008 IT Directors Group