1. Business Register Quality Improvement
18th International Roundtable on Business Survey Frames, October 2004

2. 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

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

4. 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

5. 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

6. 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

7. 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

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

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

10. 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

11. 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

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

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

14. 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 ,957
Result, missing from BR coverage:
units 13,7 %, limited companies 1,0 %
turnover 0,6 %
wage bill 0,3 %
Tuula Viitaharju
October, 2004

15. 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

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

17. Results of quality survey
Tuula Viitaharju
October, 2004

18. 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

19. 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

20. 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

21. 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

22. THANK YOU !