1. Renewal of Editing Practices at Statistics Finland UNECE Work Session on Statistical Data Editing Paris, France, 28-30 April 2014 Marjo Pyy-Martikainen

2. Baseline How to use scarce resources more efficiently? An aim towards standardization of production processes for statistics Editing recognized as a time-consuming phase of the production process, editing practices heterogeneous Work towards renewal of editing practices at Statistics Finland received a strong mandate from the management Renewal work organized in subsequent projects 2Marjo Pyy-Martikainen

3. How it all started: Editing project (7/2009-12/2011) A report on current editing practices at Statistics Finland Current editing practices time-consuming, heterogeneous, often outdated, lacking documentation and quality evaluation A report on international state-of-the-art editing methods and tools Selective editing should be used if applicable Launching of selective editing by 2015 as one of strategic goals of Statistics Finland Banff, Selekt and JMP recommended as tools A generic process model for editing To survey current editing practices at Statistics Finland To study current best methods and tools for editing 3Marjo Pyy-Martikainen

4. Number of statistics by department and by percentage of working time used for editing 4Marjo Pyy-Martikainen DEPARTMENTMissing0–5 6–10 11– 20 21– 30 31– 40 41– 50 51– 60 61– 70 71– 80 All Population Statistics 216 7 714410951 Social Statistics 06 3 412020018 Prices and Wages Statistics 18 3 323112024 Economic Statistics 85 3 420330331 Business Trends Statistics 08 3 322015024 Business Structures Statistics 25 8 1521011237 ALL1348 27 2213 98824185

5. 5Marjo Pyy-Martikainen

6. Further work: Renewal of editing practices in statistics project (9/2012-5/2014) Piloting of the editing model and recommended methods & tools The pilot statistics: Statistics on international trade in services Statistics on the finance of housing companies Quarterly statistics on the finances of municipalities Register-based statistics on buildings and dwellings 6Marjo Pyy-Martikainen

7. Renewal of editing practices project: results so far A SAS EG tool for the implementation of the editing model A short course on editing methods A database of concepts (under construction) Phase of piloting work in statistics: Planning (1) / Implementation (3) Statistics on international trade in services: selective editing reduces the amount of manual editing by 13-18 percentage points A roadmap for the implementation of selective editing 7Marjo Pyy-Martikainen

8. Future work: Implementation of selective editing project (9/2014-12/2015) Aims at achieving the strategic goal of launching selective editing The editing model and the SAS EG tool will be used to implement selective editing in 36 statistics prioritized with the help of the roadmap 8Marjo Pyy-Martikainen

9. Some challenges faced… Heads of pilot statistics: having difficulties in allocating enough time for the renewal work Editing staff: some of the new methods seem to be difficult to understand, concerns about the new editing tool taking over their tasks IT experts: the type of expertise needed is a scarce resource Experts in statistical methods: the best expert in editing as a project leader -> editing expertise not in full use Coordination of work needed from different parties difficult! 9Marjo Pyy-Martikainen

10. …and possible solutions Training & documentation of the methods and tools to get support of all persons Project management experts as project leaders Modern methods of work (e.g. Scrum) to help allocate working time and coordinate work of different parties 10Marjo Pyy-Martikainen

11. 11Marjo Pyy-Martikainen Thank you for your attention! marjo.pyy-martikainen@stat.fi