Item 7.11 SDMX Progress report Report from the SDMX Sponsors, the SDMX Secretariat and the SDMX Technical and Statistical Working Groups

Introduction The SDMX initiative is carried out by 7 international organizations dealing with official statistics (the BIS, ECB, Eurostat, the IMF, the OECD, the World bank and the UNSD). These are the SDMX Sponsors responsible for the creation and maintenance of the SDMX technical and statistical standards, the SDMX infrastructure and IT tools. See also : www.sdmx.org;

Introduction The SDMX governance consists of the SDMX Sponsors for decision making; the SDMX Secretariat for the preparation of decisions and the SDMX Technical and Statistical Working Groups: both groups exist since 2011 and are responsible for the technical work on the technical and statistical standards, IT infrastructure and IT applications. The SDMX Action Plan 2011 to 2015 (released on www.sdmx.org) guides the work of the SDMX governance bodies.

Main progress reported by the SDMX Sponsors/SDMX Secretariat The putting in place of the SDMX Global Registry for hosting SDMX artefacts commonly used by SDMX Sponsoring organizations; Decision and support of SDMX implementation in flagship domains such as National Accounts; this includes a streamlining of international data/metadata flows; Preparation of governance rules for SDMX artefacts; Decision to organize the next SDMX Global Conference in 09/2013.

Main progress reported by the SDMX Technical Working Group (20 members) Technical preparation and input to the SDMX Global Registry (user requirements, hosting proposals, registry implementation, etc.); SDMX IT tools strategy: IT tools freely available; to be tackled: interoperability, normative interfaces etc. Security guidelines for the registry and the web services (issues such as authentication, confidentiality, integrity, etc.); also for the SDMX Global Registry;

Main progress reported by the SDMX Technical Working Group (20 members) Improved technical documentation (focused on the technical standard 2.1); SDMX and other technical standards: contributing to possible interactions with other technical standards (e.g. analysis of SDMX and DDI together with use cases in progress); Review of draft SDMX artefacts submitted by SDMX implementation projects; SDMX-JSON: proposals for a JSON representation of the SDMX information model;

Main progress reported by the SDMX Statistical Working Group (20 members) Guidelines for the design of SDMX data structure definitions; Guidelines for the creation and management of harmonized cross-domain code lists; Review of draft SDMX artefacts submitted by SDMX implementation projects (such as BOP statistics); Review of the user requirements or other documentation submitted for the SDMX Global Registry; Planned: next version of the Content-oriented Guidelines (e.g. cross-domain code lists)

Conclusions In 2011/2012 the SDMX work shifted from the creation and maintenance of the standards to implementation of SDMX in statistical domains. This implementation work expand in 2012/2013. During this period, it is also intended to finalize the ongoing work on governance issues. More work needs however to be done in enhancing the SDMX statistical standards.