1. 14-15 September 2011 STATISTICAL BUSINESS REGISTERS AS BACKBONE FOR BUSINESS STATISTICS Joint UNECE/OECD/Eurostat Business Registers expert meeting 14-15 September 2011, OECD, Paris, France Clemens Schröter Eurostat

2. Business Registers as guardians of statistical units Recommandations: Statistical business registers shall become the place in the NSI where the statistical units are maintained and produced for all business related statistics. Statistical compilers shall only refer to those units which are maintained in the statistical business registers. Statistical compilers shall apply the units in the register without any further modifications.

3. The Enterprise: the core statistical unit in the business register High quality data on 'enterprise groups‘ in the business registers are essential Include ‘profiled’ units Exchange micro register data with other countries (e.g. EGR) Ensure that the enterprise units is accepted by statistical compilers and the collection of statistical data is ensured accordingly Liaise with national accounts in order to keep the 'enterprise unit' and 'institutional unit' for the corporate sector identical The global worldwide structures of enterprise groups have an impact on deriving national 'autonomous' enterprise units from the observable legal units. Recommendations

4. The local kind of activity unit and the business register ? Is it an observable – identifiable and/or reporting unit? Is it a meaningful unit (a centre of cost, not a centre of profit)? The SNA and the ESA request to partitioning enterprise units into more homogenous units as regards their activity and their geographic location Practice: Derived from ‘Local Unit’ surveys or ‘Enterprise’ surveys Recommendation: The 'local kind of activity' breakdowns of the enterprise units should be recorded and maintained in the Business Registers

5. The Business Register as a vehicle to support the statistical production process  For the preparation of surveys: all business survey populations are drawn from the same register, so their population frames are complete and consistent.  For the coordination of surveys: survey coordination should be strengthened in NSIs and the reference database should be the business register.  For the summing-up of survey results: statistical business registers should allow to complementing/ weighting survey results in order to avoid biased results

6. Business Registers should contain Up-to date information on units and their characteristics - including time stamps and source code: Live Register Population frames on statistical units - for particular reference periods used by several statistical compilers

7. From initial to final population frame

8. Client oriented data quality management Ongoing review of user requirements Close relations with any surveys coordination units Helpdesk for statistical compilers Tools for users: Service to identify units in the Business Register Interface allowing to consult and propose updates in the business register Interface which interacts with the business register for designing, coordinating and the summing up of surveys

9. Access / exchange of business register data 1.Exchange with other national statistical authorities Recommendation: No limitations 2.Exchange with foreign statistical authorities Recommendation: Establish common confidentiality regime by binding agreements (e.g. EGR) 3.Access to non statistical users Recommendation: Manage the register in the NSI in such a way that that there is an administrative register domain (exchange possible) and a statistical domain (exchange not possible)