The High-Level Group for the Modernisation of Official Statistics sponsored a series of international collaboration projects to better understand how to harness the power of "Big Data" and other new data sources, to support the production of official statistics. There were projects undertaken in 2014 and 2015.
One key outcome of these projects was that there are not many cases where Big Data, by themselves, are a suitable source for official statistics. However, they do have a role to play as part of a range of sources that, when taken together, can give better insights to current and new issues. For this reason, the focus has now switched from just Big Data, to the integration of multiple data sources.
Timeline of Activities
March 2016 | Article on the Outcomes of the UNECE Project on Using Big Data for Official Statistics |
January 2016 | |
November 2015 | Competency profiles for Big Data teams and team leaders |
October 2015 | Release of the sandbox prospectus, inviting statistical organisations to participate under the new governance arrangements |
September 2015 | Project workshop in Ljubljana to review progress and decide on priority source(s) to use to produce statistics by November 2015. |
June 2015 | Sprint session in Cork produced an options paper on the future of the Sandbox. This paper and its recommendations were approved by the HLG-MOS Executive Board, which oversees the Big Data project. |
Throughout 2015 | New Big Data project focusing on the Sandbox - New experiments, new data, and a new challenge: "Create a set of internationally comparable statistics based on one or more Big Data sources" |
April 2015 | Launch of the updated UNECE Big Data Inventory. The inventory replaces the initial inventory and includes all project information collected in the joint UNECE-UNSD survey. |
March 2015 | Workshop on Big Data, 9 March, Brussels |
January 2015 | 2014 Big Data project outputs released |
November 2014 | The HLG and representatives of expert groups review the progress so far on the 2014 Big Data project, and decide to launch a new project for 2015, with the main aim of producing and publishing multi-national statistics from a Big Data source |
September 2014 | Enhancement of the Big Data project inventory in collaboration with the United Nations Statistics Division and the HLG Modernisation Committee on Products and Sources: a new, more detailed questionnaire is under development with the aim of obtaining a more comprehensive picture of current and planned projects and facilitating exchange of knowledge and experience. |
August-October 2014 | Preliminary results of the survey "Skills necessary for people working with Big Data in Statistical Organisations". More detailed analysis will be prepared by October 2014. |
Throughout 2014 | International collaboration project on The Role of Big Data in the Modernisation of Statistical Production - This project, overseen by the High-Level Group for the Modernisation of Official Statistics, is running during 2014, and aims to:
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June 2013 | Draft classification of types of Big Data |
March 2013 | Position paper What does Big data mean for official statistics? (March 2013) drafted for the High Level Group for the Modernization of Official Statistics (HLG-MOS). |