(The portions in blue below are links that should lead you to documents on the Machine Learning project Home page)

• There are now 29 participants from 14 organisations and 12 countries. A profile of the participants and some machine learning projects conducted in their organisation was produced and shared. The participants reported 39 machine learning projects on a wide range of data sources, processes, objectives and level of maturity. Another 5 persons were added to a distribution. They will also contribute to the project.
• Given the interest of the majority of members to work on pilot studies, the planning focused on WP1
• A planning meeting was held on April 4, followed a by progress meeting on April 16. 
• Leads for the three work packages were identified.
• The objectives of the project were set. The ultimate objective is to advance the research, development and application of machine learning techniques to add value to the production of official statistics. 
• It was agreed to conduct pilot studies (WP1) on four themes:

  • Classification and coding on more traditional data (survey, census, administrative/register)

  • Edit and imputation on more traditional data

  • Imagery

  • Web and sentiment data

• A lead organisation was identified for two of the four pilot study themes (more should be identified by the time of the EB meeting)
• Each organisation was asked to proposed at least on machine learning project to be considered for one of the pilot study themes
• Inference with Big Data, namely sensor data, and related challenges was reported by several organisations; it will be addressed in WP2 on data quality
• The ONS have booked a venue to hold a sprint meeting from May 13-15.