1. EXPERIENCE OF THE CENTRAL STATISTICAL BUREAU OF LATVIA IN ORGANIZING SOURCES FOR NATIONAL ACCOUNTS
Eurostat Workshop “Supervisory and Control Systems for National Accounts Purposes”
8-9 December 2009

2. Content of presentation
A place of Macroeconomic Statistics Department in the Latvian statistical system and within the Office
The main national legal conditions for performance of statistical work
The annual National Programme of Statistical Information and CSB’s Work Programme
Description of the Document Storage System

3. Part 1
A place of Macroeconomic Statistics Department in the Latvian statistical system and within the Office

4. Interaction within the Latvian Statistical System
Other producers of official statistics:
Bank of Latvia
Ministries, agencies
Administrative sources
Users:
Bank of Latvia
Ministries and their subordinate agencies
Municipalities
Mass media
Enterprises
Households
EU and international statistical organisations
Central Statistical Bureau
Data providers:
Bank of Latvia
Ministries, agencies
Municipalities
Enterprises
Households
Data Collection and Processing Centres

5. Subject-matter departments of the CSB
Business Statistics Department
Trade and Services Statistics Section
Investment and Real Estate Statistics Section
Industrial Statistics Section
Enterprise Finance and Structural Statistics Section
Business Register Section
Agricultural and Environmental Statistics Department
Agricultural Statistics Section
Environment and Energy Statistics Section
Transport and Tourism Statistics Section
Social Statistics Department
Wage Statistics Section
Employment Statistics Section
Population Statistics Section
Culture, Education, Science and Health Statistics Section
Household Budget Statistics Section
Living Standard’s Statistics Section
Interview’s Coordination Section
Population Census Section
Price Statistics Department
Consumer price Indices Section
Producer Price Indices Section
Macroeconomic Statistics Department
Government Finance Statistics Section
National Accounts Section
Resource and Use Statistics Section
Foreign Trade Statistics Section

6. Information flows for National Accounts purposes
Household surveys
Statistical questionnaires
Other departments of the CSB
SNA
Statistical questionnaires
Macroeconomic Statistics Department
Administrative sources & registers
Bank of Latvia
Financial and Capital Market Commission
Statistical questionnaires
Statistical questionnaires

7. Interdepartmental agreements and cooperation contracts
In total, the CSB since 2004 has concluded up to 25 data exchange agreements and cooperation contracts with other state institutions
In certain extent, all of them feed the process of compilation of national accounts, but the most important are agreements between the CSB and:
Bank of Latvia
State Revenue Service
Financial and Capital Market Commission

8. Mode of gathering information for National Accounts from external sources
Direct access to particular source
Example: granted direct access to the Information system of the Treasury (viewing and downloading records and totals only)
Snap-shot of the Registers
Example: exhaustive database (files with individual records) of the Tax-payer Register of the State Revenue Service
Tables prepared for National Accounts needs
Example: tailor-made tables and files received from Bank of Latvia or Financial and Capital Market Commission

9. The main national legal conditions for performance of statistical work
Part 2
The main national legal conditions for performance of statistical work

10. National laws
Administrative procedure Law, adopted on November 14, 2001 and further amended (2003, 2004, 2006, 2008)
State Administration Structure Law, adopted on June 6, 2002 and further amended (2008, 2009)
Law on State Statistics of the Republic of Latvia, adopted on November 6, 1997 and further amended (1999, 2004, 2006, 2007, 2009)

11. Law on State Statistics, Article 5. Central Statistical Bureau
(1) ... is a direct administration authority subordinated to the Ministry of Economics, which is executed in the form of supervision. It is responsible for the organisation of the work of official statistics in the Republic of Latvia and for the correctness of the data it has obtained by compiling the information received from respondents.
(2) ... shall perform the following functions:
3) preparation, within the scope of the financial resources of the current year, of the National Programme of Statistical Information, the questionnaire forms for official statistics. The National Programme of Statistical Information, the questionnaire forms for official statistics shall be approved by the Cabinet;
4) taking responsibility for the development of a unified classification system for economic information. The Cabinet shall approve the unified classification system for economic information and the procedures for the implementation and use thereof;
5) co-ordination of the whole flow of statistical information at the national level, as well as the mutual harmonisation of the statistical indicators to be included in State registers and other information systems;

12. Cabinet Regulations
Annual Regulations of the Cabinet on National Programme of Statistical Information
Regulations of the Cabinet on statistical questionnaires, collected by the CSB and other state administration bodies
Regulation of the Cabinet on a Unified System of Classification of Economic Information

13. Design of statistical questionnaires (1)
Each statistical questionnaire has a legal form of separate attachment to Cabinet Regulations Process of adoption of Cabinet Regulations is as follows: Often the questionnaires are accompanied with instructions on their completing, which also make a part of Cabinet Regulation and ensures clear understanding about nature of data.
Preparing the draft by responsible institution
Harmonization with involved ministries and institutions
Adoption by the Cabinet

14. Design of statistical questionnaires (2)
In order to:
improve content of statistical questionnaires submitted by the CSB (via Ministry of Economics) for adoption in the Cabinet,
to avoid duplication of requested data
but without loss of information necessary for National Accounts,
the Macroeconomic Statistics Department is represented in two internal permanent working groups, one – for business questionnaires, another – for household surveys

15. Part 3
The annual National Programme of Statistical Information and CSB’s Work Programme

16. National Programme of Statistical Information (1)
NPSI is prepared and adopted for each calendar year
NPSI’2009 consists of 30 chapters
Ch 1 National Accounts
Ch 2 Balance of Payments
Ch 3 State Finance
...
Ch 30 Business Trend Surveys
Each chapter is divided into 3 parts:
A statistical information that is gathered according to EU requirements
B statistical information that is prepared according to regular data enquiries of international organisations
C statistical information that is gathered for domestic users

17. NPSI (2) Each record in a chapter contains information on:
Subject (specified statistical data/indicators)
Responsible institution
Frequency
Method of acquisition of information and data sources
Level of aggregation
Examples
1.21
(A)
Regional GVA, 2007, current prices
Central Statistical Bureau
Yearly
Calculations, information of Treasury
6 Statistical regions and NACE 1.1 A-B, C-E, F, G-I, J-K, L-O
2.15
(C)
Foreign investments in statutory capital of enterprises registered in Latvia
Bank of Latvia
Quarterly
Surveys, questionnaires, calculations
Total in Latvia, by NACE 2-digit level, by countries
3.36
Execution of budget of municipalities according to economic and functional categories
The Treasury
Monthly,
Full observation
Total in Latvia, by municipalities

18. Process of drafting and adoption of the NPSI
Central Statistical Bureau
1st draft of the NPSI
Draft Cabinet regulation on the NPSI
Draft Cabinet regulation on the NPSI
Ministries, social partners
State Chancellery
Ministries, social partners
Assess-ment of the draft
State Chancellery
Assess-ment of the draft
Cabinet of Ministers
Central Statistical Bureau
Cabinet regulation on the NPSI - final

19. Institutions involved in fulfilling of the NPSI
National Accounts
Balance of Payments
Budget & finance
Foreign Trade
Prices
Demograpfy & Census
Education, innov.
Culture
Health
Social Protection
Living Standards
Crime
Business Register
SBS
Wages
Employment
Agriculture
Forestry
Fishing
Industry
Energy
Construction
Investments
Trade & services
Transport
Toursim
Real Estate
Environment Protection
Information Society
Business Trends
CSB
BoL
M’Fin
M’Int
M’Edu
M’Cul
M’Env
M’Econ
M’Agri
M’Tran
M’Just
M’Reg
FCMC
SRS
Treas
Prosec
Other

20. CSB’s Work Programme
WP is prepared each year and approved by the President of the CSB.
WP is a very detailed list of tasks for each production and/or support unit of the CSB.
WP covers separately all stages/processes of production of every set of statistical information:
preparation for surveys,
collection of surveys data and processing of administrative data,
controls and checks of data,
imputation,
processing of aggregates,
analysis,
estimations and
publication/dissemination
Each task is recorded with strict deadlines and units responsible for its execution.

21. Example of records in the WP
No of record
Unit – owner of the product
Task
Classification of task
Source data
Frequency
Unit – executor
Deadline
Unit – receiver
No in NPSI
1.8.1
Outside source
Preparation of VAT declarations’ data for import into INTRASTAT register
Data import
VAT declarations M
Application Software Delopment Section
20 Jan
Foreign Trade Statistics Section
4.2
2.28.5
Extrastat & INTRASTAT data -BEC , 1st quarter 2009
Transmission of data file
Custom declarations, Intrastat - 1A, Intrastat - 1B, Intrastat - 2A, Intrastat - 2B Q
3 June
Section of National Accounts
4.4
32.44
Government Finance Section
FISIM – 1st quarter 2009
Estima-tions
CSB questionnai-res,
BoL data, FCMC data
22 May
1.1
1.11
1.12

22. Philosophy of the WP
If preparation of given statistical product involve several consecutive processes, a separate task for each of them has to be formulated
WP is made in MS Excel environment in order to make use of filter function – that gives a possibility to identify workload of unit, to assess tasks in terms of length of execution, etc.
Changes can be made in any time during the calendar year upon a request from the structural units
Statistics Methodology and Organisation Division makes the WP and monitors the execution of tasks once a month

23. Draft WP’2010
Consists of more than 5.5 thousand records on different tasks
Final receiver:
National Accounts Section records
Government Finance Section – 28 records
Foreign Trade Statistics Section – 81 record
Resource and Use Statistics Section - ?
Executor
National Accounts Section records
Government Finance Section – 116 records
Foreign Trade Statistics Section – 311 records
Resource and Use Statistics Section – 4 records yet
Macroeconomic Statistics Department makes in total ~ 82 data deliveries to Eurostat per year

24. Description of the Document Storage System
Part 4
Description of the Document Storage System

25. Background information on ADS (1)
In 2008, within the framework of Quality Management, a Document Storage System (ADS) was developed in the CSB
Starting with 2009, each year all fundamental processes performed for each statistical survey as well as for complex projects like compilation of national accounts must be described in detail
All quality indicators have to be described regardless if an official quality report is to be prepared or not
The ADS provides also technical possibility to attach number of supporting documents explaining methodological questions

26. Background information on ADS (2)
“In-house” part
Project description
Values of quality indicators
Thezaurus
FAQ of registered users
ADS
Administration
“Public” part
ADS Statistics
Information on ADS
Registration of users

27. Background information on ADS (3)
There are 4 kinds of access rights to the ADS for CSB staff:
Administrator
Attestant
User
Viewer
So far, total number of projects (surveys, calculations) to be described is 161, of which
Theme “National Accounts” – 14 (Q’2008, Q’2009, A’2008, A’Reg’2006)
Theme “Government Finance” – 10
Theme “Wages” – 11
Theme “Employment” – 4
Theme “Industry” – 7 etc.

28. Structure of Project Description
Basic information
General information
Identification of data demand
Project preparation
Sampling
Data collection
Data processing
Analysis of aggregates and preparation for publishing
Data dissemination
Additional information (internal use only)
II. Quality Indicators
Relevance
Accuracy
Timeliness and punctuality
Accessibility and clarity
Comparability
Coherence
Each indicator has to be characterised by values of quality dimensions

29. Sub – stages of Project description
2. General information
4. Project preparation
9. Data dissemination
Time interval of data collection or fieldwork
Project objective
Dissemination format
Periodicity of data collection
Statistical units
Data dissemination periodicity
Data is comparable since (year)
Reporting units
Date of the availability of results
Persons in charge of the project
Data sources (CSB questionnaires, other institutions that produce official statistics and administrative data providers)
Publications
Classifications and nomenclatures used
Data revision policy
Base period
Main indicators and their level of aggregation
Information on collected indicators (link to questionnaires, regulations)
Information on accessibility of anonymized individual data

30. Status of quality indicators
Searching parameters
Status of version
Status of quality indicators
To open
To correct

31. List of ADS projects where variable is represented
Variable code ESA
List of ADS projects where variable is represented
Variable title
Variable definition
Measurement unit
Variable code SBS

32. Particular projects can be identified for search

33. Thank you for your attention! questions?
Dace Tomase
Director of Macroeconomic Statistics Department
Central Statistical Bureau of Latvia