Catalogues

201. A primary aim of CSPA is to support efficient sharing and reuse of process patterns, information and services at an organization and international level.

201. One key requisite in achieving this goal is an ability to reliably and efficiently discover what is available for reuse to support a particular business need. This includes an ability to efficiently assess whether a potentially reusable artefact is, in fact, "fit for purpose" in practice when it comes to supporting that particular business need.

202. Catalogues of reusable resources have a key role within CSPA. They provide lists and descriptions of standardized artefacts, and, where relevant, information on how to obtain and use them. The catalogues can be at many levels, from global to local. For example, it is envisaged that each statistical organization will have catalogues of processes, information objects and Statistical Services. 

203. However, for the purposes of CSPA it is the global level that is the primary interest. The global catalogue is called the CSPA Services Catalogue. The CSPA Services Catalogue provides information about resources and potential collaboration partners, helping to ensure that Statistical Services conform to the requirements of CSPA.

204. The CSPA Services Catalogue will not necessarily hold copies of executable code. It will, however, provide all necessary information about how to access the artefacts, including contact details for further information.

205.The CSPA Services Catalogue contains information about developments that are planned or in progress by statistical organizations. This information will facilitate the creation of a global roadmap of statistical organizations developments that can be consulted to see which organizations are developing what and when.

206. The Global Catalogue is a composite conceptual catalogue representing 5 layers of information.  Figure 12 below outlines the defined layers and their current implementation.



Figure 12:  CSPA Global Artefact Catalogue Layers

207. Links to the current implementation of the layers of the Global Catalogue are provided below:

  • Layer 1: Knowledge Base (Virtual Help Desk 1 ) provides access to standards such as GSIM, GSBPM and GAMSO, as well as information about DDI and SDMX.

  • Layer 2: Investment Catalogue 2 provides information about the developments that have been planned or are in progress by statistical organizations.

  • Layer 3: Business Capabilities Catalogue 3 provides information about the development of statistical services that are in various stages of development, and various maturity levels for sharing in statistical organizations.

  • Layer 4: CSPA Services Catalogue (this is the primary catalogue supporting CSPA) https://www.statistical-services.org/  4 provides access to a list of Statistical Services that have been developed. This catalogue is hosted by Eurostat.

  • Layer 5: Technical/Supporting Services - currently accessed via the Service Implementation Specification for the CSPA Service, the current repository is Github.com 5 .


Governance

208. From 2016, a new governance model for CSPA development and support will be put in place. This includes a dedicated committee of experts to oversee the maintenance and enhancement of CSPA and related materials, and to provide technical support to implementers. In the following paragraphs, the groups involved and the role they play is outlined.

UNECE High-Level Group for the Modernisation of Official Statistics (HLG-MOS)

209. CSPA was developed as a series of projects overseen by the HLG. This group will be the custodians of the outputs. Whilst the architecture itself will be "owned" by the international official statistics community, it will be administered by the HLG, as top-level representatives of that community.

HLG Executive Board

210.The Executive Board has a coordinating role with respect to the Sharing Tools Group. This CSPA implementation Group reports to the Executive Board on a monthly basis and the Chair of Group has observer status at the Executive Board meetings.

Sharing Tools Working Group

211.The UNECE, on behalf of the international statistical community provides leadership for maintaining and extending CSPA to retain its relevance and value as an 'industry asset' through the Sharing Tools Working Group.

212. The HLG, Executive Board and the Sharing Tools Group will carefully balance the advantages of change, in terms of increasing relevance and usefulness, against the costs of having to implement those changes within statistical organizations. A reasonable degree of stability over time is therefore a key requirement for the CSPA Reference Architecture and associated enablers.

213.The members of the Sharing Tools Working Group are drawn from a range of backgrounds including IT, enterprise architecture, methodology and standards.

214.The Sharing Tools Working Group provides advice to statistical organizations who are planning, designing and developing CSPA Statistical Services. The working group can help guide the 'sharability' of Statistical Services.


215.Figure 13 summarizes these groups and roles.
 
Figure 13:  HLG-MOS Governance

 Legal, Licensing and Financial Considerations

 
216.CSPA provides an industry reference architecture enabling the development of statistical services for sharing and reuse, however, it does not provide a framework covering the legal, licensing and financial considerations.  Statistical organizations involved in HLG activities are now interested in collaborating more effectively to share, develop and enhance joint products.  The legal, licensing and financial considerations are critical enablers of effective sharing and reuse of statistical services that have been developed by statistical organizations (either alone or in collaboration with others).  It is noted that any CSPA statistical services developed and owned by a 3rd party vendor or community will probably have specific legal, licensing and financial considerations. 6

217.The Statistical Modernisation Community Statement of Intent provides a framework for enhanced collaboration between official statistics organisations, providing a basis for the development, sharing and maintenance of the joint products of the community. The aim is to ensure an open inclusive approach to modernisation activities, while at the same time giving potential partners a sense of the level of engagement expected.

218. All HLG-MOS members are listed as endorsing the Statement of Intent, taking effect from 1 January 2016.
 

  1. Accessed via the UNECE Confluence wiki (http://www1.unece.org/stat/platform/display/VSH) ↩
  2. Accessed via the UNECE Confluence wiki (http://www1.unece.org/stat/platform/x/7QKvBg) ↩
  3. Accessed via the UNECE Confluence wiki (http://www1.unece.org/stat/platform/display/BCC) ↩
  4. Accessed via the following link: https://www.statistical-services.org/  ↩
  5. An example can be viewed at https://github.com/edwindj/cspa_rest/tree/ea9d59b5afbb4764cca6b34f5d3120f3cf7c16e6 ↩
  6. Licensing guidelines produced by the EC in the context of our SERV Project, can be found here: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/cros/content/guideline-open-source-licensing_en. The Joinup Licensing Assistant is a tool available to check to how far and on which licences a work using or combining data or software components licensed under two different licences can be distributed and (if it can be distributed) under which licence(s): https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/collection/eupl/news/can-you-really-combine-code ↩

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