1. Vision of Information Technology at the Service of the ESS
Portugese Council Summit earlier this year
Closer co-operation in the IT area
eEurope initiative with ultimate goals of - more transparency - greater participation of the European citizen - better functioning of European public administration - more efficient information policies
IT and Statistics will play an important role  eStatistics for eEurope

2. IT and Official Statistics
Working tools and environment - growing demand for faster and more accurate information - combination of information from different sources - rapid access to large distributed data warehouses - access to working environment from anywhere - better personalization of work environments - knowledge bases - individual search engines - rapid access to translation services - secure electronic signatures - distant-learning will grow in importance

3. IT and Official Statistics
Working structures and data exchange (1) - Member States free of charge access to Eurostat ’s Reference Environment - Data exchange exclusively via secure electronic means - pan-European de-centralized general help-desk - statistical problems - technical problems - operational problems - group work across national borders - new technologies will allow collective production of documents

4. IT and Official Statistics
Working structures and data exchange (2) - Eurostat and NSI ’s will coordinate their IT development plan - New IT projects based on impact analysis on the ESS - IT projects supervised by Eurostat/Member State - Information systems will be interconnected - finance, administrative, statistics, legislative - rapid access to different data bases - Immediate calculation of aggregates of indicators - Official Statisticians work interchangeably in Eurostat/NSI ’s - Decentralized data warehouses allow real time data extraction - Data validation systems will be developed and implemented

5. The European Citizen and the ESS
Unique portal to all official statistical information
Access to regional, national and European statistics and indicators
Search will be guided by intelligent user-interfaces
Positive impact on the transparency of the political, social and economic life in the EU
Users obtain easily the statistical information they want - microdata - flexible unser-defined aggregates - combined GIS/statistical products
More powerful tools for disclosure protection

6. The IT Steering Committee is asked to comment on
practicalities
priorities
actions to be taken by Eurostat and the NSI‘s