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

2. 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

3. 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

4. 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

5. 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

6. 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

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