Input Privacy-preserving Techniques

Progress

Four members of the project team gave presentations at the UN EXPO2020 event in Dubai during the session on Privacy enhancing techniques.

The report on the pilot with private set intersection is finished.

Three potential use cases have been identified for further development this year.
Two use cases concerns international trade, in which one use case is worked out from the Netherlands and one from Canada that requires information from the other statistical office.
In the third use case, an NSI wants to offer a PET-based remote analytics service , like e.g. a predictive model trained on its own internal data. The service could be used by another subject (public, private or another NSIs) that needs to access the NSI’s data in a privacy-preserving way for its own purposes.

A list of invitees for the public consultation has been drawn up.
In the process of formulating the questions for the public consultation, it became clear we need more time. In stead of open questions the idea is to focus more on the concepts of solutions. This requires more elaboration on the proposed solutions. To get the best out of the consultation.

Next Steps

Describe the two use cases concerning International trade with support from subject experts.

Briefly discuss the third proposal of the use case in the next IPP group meeting to ensure that the scope is within the scope of the IPP project.

Testing the solution (pilot with private set intersection) of StatCan with the software of Istat.

Meeting with the UN pet lab and the project team to exchange knowledge and coordinate who does what. The focus of the project team is on adding statistical use cases, the UN pet lab for the technical environment.

Elaborating the questions for the public consultation.

Risks and Issues

Issue	Mitigation

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Meta Academy for the Modernization of Official Statistics

Progress

General:

We have started to reach out to partners and call for participation

Work package 1 - Benchmarking:

We have secured a facilitator with experience in co-design to assist with work package 1 and 3.
Questions for NSOs on their training needs and questions for training providers are being drafted so they can be sent out once participants have been identified

Work package 2 - Co-creating Git training:

The Git manual produced by the OECD with collaboration from Statistics Canada is going through the second round of reviews.

Next Steps

Continue call for participants
Meeting with Statistics Canada's expert on virtual pedagogue on February 24. This meeting will discuss her ability to contribute to the project.
Prepare questionnaire for NSO participants

Risks and Issues

Issue	Mitigation
If Statistics Canada's expert on virtual pedagogue is unable to participate in the project then we will have to look elsewhere for this expertise.

Data Governance for Interoperability Framework

Progress

Not started yet. The call for participation has been send out and we are waiting for members. UNECE is working on finding a technical lead and/or project manager.

Next Steps

Risks and Issues

Issue	Mitigation

News from the Groups
Blue-skies Thinking	Identifying Topics/Opportunities. - So far: Community on metadata and data virtualization Joint Biosecurity Centre and Rapid Survey System Microdata for understanding declining response rates Nowcasting	CONTINIOUS	The group decided to make this a continuous process. On the biosecurity centre, a meeting was set up between ONS and Serbia to discuss taking forward this work.

	Digital Twins	IN PROGRESS	Subgroup to be set up. The focus, objectives and possible outputs from this activity are to be established.


	Mobile survey data collection for climate change	IN PROGRESS	Subgroup to be set up. The focus, objectives and possible outputs from this activity are to be established.

	Other
Applying Data Science and Modern Methods	Scoping and planning of work	IN PROGRESS
	Activity 2	NOT STARTED
	Activity 3	TO DEFINE
	Activity 4	TO DEFINE
		TO DEFINE
	Other	Five colleagues have so far signed up for the group (ABS, Statistics Canada, 2x Statistics Portugal and Eurostat)
Capabilities and Communication	Future of work toolkits	IN PROGRESS	It is proposed to use a session on Hybrid working in NSO's during the CES in June this year, to promote toolkits and to get more examples/materials from the countries. It is also possible to conduct survey before CES session on hybrid working. Purpose of the survey should be access level of maturity or preparedness of the NSOs for blended working (something scale based) and to ask people about availability of resources, policies/frameworks that they can share with us. It is suggested to prepare a combined survey for different sub teams under Future of work team. We should plan to finalize survey by the end of March and send it to the countries in April. Looking for more members for this sub team. Currently represented by colleagues from the following countries: Ireland, Italy, Netherlands.
	The Job of the Future	IN PROGRESS	Literature review and deciding on the scope of work. We are also collecting data on employment structure in our NSIs. We need to consider different generations we deal with but also new way of working after pandemic. Next meeting will be at the beginning of March. Looking for more members for this sub team. Currently represented by colleagues from the following countries: Netherlands, Ireland and Poland.
	Reaching Young People	IN PROGRESS	Literature review and deciding on the scope of work. Next meeting is on 28 February. Looking for more members for this sub team. Currently represented by colleagues from the following countries: Netherlands, Ireland, Poland and Albania.
	Ethics Managment (Data and Business)	IN PROGRESS	This Task Team was contacted by the Chair of the Expert Meeting on Modernizing Statistical Legislation (chaired by Nikki Shearman, UK) together with Steven Vale (UNECE), who is chairing work on the Core Values of Official Statistics to decide if there is a need for a possible proposal for in-depth review on data ethics, as all of these groups deal with ethics to some extend. After the discussion it was decided that an in-depth review would be useful, and the time is right. We cannot easily separate data ethics from a broader discussion of ethics and business ethics. This Task Team has already worked a lot on clarifying these concepts and is happy to contribute this to the in-depth review. The survey of national practices conducted by this team could also be used or build upon during the in-depth review process. Task Team is currently working on the where ethics should be added in GSBPM/GAMSO. Next call of the Task Team is on 23 February.
	Strategic Communication Framework follow-up	IN PROGRESS	Almost final version of the document "The role of brand management, marketing in crisis communication for Statistical Organizations" was formatted. Next steps are to include more information in the introduction and to revise conclusions. Team is planning to finalize this document by end of February. Team will also work on developing wiki page with the case studies and examples from different organizations on crisis management, reputation management, digital marketing, etc. After the document is finalised, the team will try to promote it and make it available. This document could also be used as an example of principle 10 International cooperation, for the campaign to celebrate 30 years of the principles of official statistics.
	HRMT Workshop 2022	IN PROGRESS	Workshop on HRMT is planned for 11-13 October 2022 in EFTA house in Brussels.
	Other
Supporting Standards	GSIM Review	IN PROGRESS	Two main activites are ongoing in parallel: We are currently collecting feedback from the community on possible improvement of GSIM. We collect all kind of feedback, some examples: additional information objects to be included in GSIM to capture information needed in the statistical production process changes to information objects, for example, to better align with other models such as GSBPM challenges in using certain GSIM information objects Feedback is expected until 18 March 2022. Discussion is ongoing based on the issues raised by past HLG-MOS task teams that worked on GSIM. For details, please check our Github group @ https://github.com/UNECE/GSIMRevision/
	Core Ontology for Official Statistics phase 2	IN PROGRESS	The Task Team is currently discussing the input received from the expert review conducted at the end of 2021. The Task Team members review the information package that we discuss at our next meeting and the discussion is organised according to the issues defined on the Github platform. For details, please check our Github group @ https://github.com/linked-statistics/COOS
	GSBPM Task	IN PROGRESS	The Task Team is currently discussing the small group proposals for the phases of the GSBPM (the Task Team members defined these at an earlier stage in small groups). The proposals are all put together in a Google doc, Task Team members adding comments before the meeting where they are discussed. We are currently discussing Phase 5 proposals. For details, please access the Google doc @ https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hzG4uSOyOnxTMoj4ti5zEGtLl82e2eJhAN4_RZKknc0/edit
	SDMX-DDI-GSBPM	NOT STARTED	Task Team work is expected to start later this year. The group has fine-tuned the proposal a bit and some clarification, further discussion is needed whether the SDMX/DDI community will have a lead on this topic and the Supporting Standards Group will contribute or the other way around: the group has a proposal and the SDMX/DDI community will be involved in the discussion. This will be clarified during the upcoming weeks.
	GSBPM overarching processes	NOT STARTED	Work is expected to start in July 2022.
	CSPA capacity building	NOT STARTED	Work is delayed as there is no still no chair for the group. There has been an e-mail exchange with Emanuele (as the champion of the group). If the currently ongoing last potential lead to find a chair fails then I will contact Emanuele and the Executive Board again to help find a chair to the group so the work can start. We still have the list of people who indicated their interest in the group.
	ModernStats World Workshop 2022	IN PROGRESS	The Organising Committee has been set up to prepare for the workshop. Date and place is final: 27-29 June 2022, Belgrade, Serbia. The OC has been focusing on the information notice and discussed open issues (format, content, deadlines). The letter was sent out on 4 February. Registrations are expected until 10 June 2022. Three main topics of the workshop: ModernStats – Evolution ModernStats – Integration ModernStats – Implementation
	Other	Missing resource: Task Team chair for the CSPA Capacity Building Task Team. New experts have joined the Supporting Standards Group and the Task Teams.
Machine Learning 2022	Global Data Squad	IN PROGRESS	International research projects in development (AIS data, web scraping data, algorithm quality, IT infrastructure) for Global Data Squad.
	Workstreams	IN PROGRESS	New programme launched for 2022: focus on international research collaboration, capability building and production; 34 activity proposals for research projects and knowledge exchange activities received; Coding and classification most popular topic; greater interest this year in modelling, model retraining and imagery. Around 140 people attended our launch meeting on 9 Feb. 96 people signed up to join the activities so far.
	Hackathon(s)	IN PROGRESS
	Capacity Building	IN PROGRESS	Meetings held with ONS Data Science Campus faculty to support Coffee and Coding programme development UN CEBD Task Team on Training invited to ML Group meeting to present their new training resource catalogue
	Communications	IN PROGRESS	Recruitment: Group promoted on social media and at UN Big Data Conference in Dubai with 43 new members joining since start of the year. Monthly newsletter: February edition published and uploaded to website Expo 2020: Importance of ML promoted to new audiences in the Middle East and UN Regional Hubs. ML Group work promoted at a session introducing the value of machine learning for national statistical offices at start of exploring ML. Technical sessions on ML skills and workshop on bridging research-implementation gap for UN Regional Hubs delivered. Connections built with UN CEBD Task Teams.
	Other	Next steps + Requests ML thematic activities (research projects, study groups) being set up and will commence work in March. Please promote group to new members interested in active participation in one of the research projects / knowledge exchange groups Invite to NSOs to present their ML journey to ML Group - 15 minute presentation ML expert meeting for end of year? Geneva 31 Oct-2 Nov or around HLG MOS November workshop? – feedback plus offers to host