Combining administrative and survey data: potential benefits and impact on editing and imputation for a structural business survey UNECE Work Session on Statistical Data Editing Ljubljana, 9-11 May 2011 De Giorgi V., Luzi O., Oropallo F., Seri G., Siesto G. ISTAT, Italy

Combining administrative and survey data: potential benefits and impact on editing and imputation for a structural business survey UNECE Work Session on Statistical Data Editing Ljubljana, 9-11 May 2011 Outline Background The Istat re-design project for SBS Paper contents Some results / conclusions

Combining administrative and survey data: potential benefits and impact on editing and imputation for a structural business survey UNECE Work Session on Statistical Data Editing Background European Regulation on Structural Business Statistics (SBS) (March 2008) states that “MSs can integrate data available in different information sources, including administrative data, to reduce statistical burden on enterprises and production costs “ MEETS program (Modernisation of European Enterprises and Trade Statistics) approved by the European Council and Parliament (Dec 2008) in order to “..promote efficiency within the ESS moving towards a more integrated and efficient statistical system, reviewing the production methods and foster a dynamic approach to achieving cost efficiency “ lLjubljana, 9-11 May 2011

Combining administrative and survey data: potential benefits and impact on editing and imputation for a structural business survey UNECE Work Session on Statistical Data Editing The Istat re-design project for SBS Completely revise the SBS production system, moving from the current production model (where admin data are mainly used to integrate statistical survey data) to a new integrated system (where admin data represent the core of information on SBS and direct surveys supply complementary information on specific sub- populations and/or economic variables), in order to save costs and reduce statistical burden on enterprises lLjubljana, 9-11 May 2011 The Italian economic system is characterized by a large amount of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) (number of employees<100) ~95% of the Italian enterprises sum up for ~47% of Total Employees ~ 27% of Total Turnover ~ 33% of Total Value Added

Combining administrative and survey data: potential benefits and impact on editing and imputation for a structural business survey UNECE Work Session on Statistical Data Editing The Istat re-design project for SBS Explored administrative sources for the economic variables of SME Italian Statistical Business Register (BR) resulting from the integration of data from statistical and administrative sources (Tax Register, Social Security Register, Register of the Electric Power Board, etc.) Financial Statements (FS): cover corporate enterprises; are collected by the Chambers of Commerce (~ 650,000 companies covering less than 20% of the BR, and ~57% in terms of persons employed) Sector Studies (SS) Survey: carried out by the Italian Fiscal Authority to collect enterprises detailed costs and income items (~4 million enterprises having the 30,000 ≤Turnover ≤ 7,5 million euro) lLjubljana, 9-11 May 2011

Combining administrative and survey data: potential benefits and impact on editing and imputation for a structural business survey Potential data/process flow in the new integrated SME production process UNECE Work Session on Statistical Data Editing Ljubljana, 9-11 May 2011

Combining administrative and survey data: potential benefits and impact on editing and imputation for a structural business survey UNECE Work Session on Statistical Data Editing Paper contents Illustrate preliminary exploratory analyses and experimental results on FS and SS aiming to: Ljubljana, 9-11 May 2011 Assess the usability and quality of available administrative sources for estimating key variables for the SME population Obtain information on potential E&I costs/benefits deriving from integrating administrative and survey data on SMEs

Combining administrative and survey data: potential benefits and impact on editing and imputation for a structural business survey UNECE Work Session on Statistical Data Editing Ljubljana, 9-11 May 2011 Analysed quality dimensions of admin sources Coverage Covered SME population Potential impact on estimates due to the direct replacement of statistical data with admin data Accuracy (at elementary and distributional level) Completeness A vailable consistent variables (in terms of definitions) in the source Potential impact on estimates due to imputation of item non responses Priorities can be assigned to sources based on these criteria (e.g. in case of overlapping units/variables in different sources)

Combining administrative and survey data: potential benefits and impact on editing and imputation for a structural business survey SME target population coverage (percent) of FS and SS, in terms of number of enterprises (ENT) and number of employees (EMP) by economic activity (Year 2007) UNECE Work Session on Statistical Data Editing Ljubljana, 9-11 May 2011

Combining administrative and survey data: potential benefits and impact on editing and imputation for a structural business survey UNECE Work Session on Statistical Data Editing Ljubljana, 9-11 May 2011 Variable “Changes in stocks of finished products and work in progress”: potential impact of missing data imputation by domain (2 digits Nace’s code) and imputation method (Year 2007) (Mean) Relative Estimation Error due to Imputation/Estimation

Combining administrative and survey data: potential benefits and impact on editing and imputation for a structural business survey Conclusions Results obtained so far, partially presented in the paper, confirm the high quality of the analyzed admin sources in terms of accessibility, coverage and accuracy It is expected that in the new SME production system, additional validation activities due to the direct use admin in combination with survey data will be highly compensated by costs and burden reduction Additional research is needed particularly on the side of sampling strategy and questionnaire design for the new SME sample survey The preliminary process implementation is planned by the end of 2011 UNECE Work Session on Statistical Data Editing Ljubljana, 9-11 May 2011