Machine Learning

Progress

The project membership and distribution lists kept growing. The membership now stands at 35 participants from 16 organisations and 13 countries. The followers and additional collaborators list now stands at 20 persons from 8 countries, with Finland recently joining.
Work is progressing on all work packages and pilot studies. Refer to the documentation on the 2019-07-16 Meeting held last week. Wiki pages have been setup to document pilot studies as they are executed. See: Summary documentation - C&C, Summary documentation - E&I and Summary documentation - Imagery. The pages were created last week and contain limited information for now. Some preliminary results and deliverables are available at Working documents.
Mexico has managed to obtain satellite data for the Netherlands with NASA / USGS. This request is very advanced, hopefully, hard drives will be coming to Holland soon.
An introduction to the ML project presented at the ModernStats workshop in Geneva was attended by over 50 people and was very well received. Plenty of further discussion took place during the coffee breaks and over dinner. This led to Statistics Finland joining the ML distribution list. The presentation and other final documents are available at Project Documents.
In response to suggestions provided by the Exec Board at last month's meeting and the ones before, a Related international activities wiki page was setup to list international activities and their potential links to the ML project. Most of these activities have at least on ML team member or person on the ML distribution list. A meeting took place with Jon Blake to learn more about the Global Platform for Data.
A solution was found to enable members to share code.
Initial information on the Machine Learning project - Second sprint was communicated to team members. The sprint will be held in Belgrade, Serbia, from September 18 to 20. Some e-mail invitations have been sent.
The project continues to accumulate papers related to the use of ML for statistics. They are available at the Reference documents wiki page. They are listed in a manner to direct users to papers that refer the most to certain key themes of the ML pilot studies.

Next Steps

Work on the work packages and pilot studies, and document them along the way
Finalize the agenda and logistics of the second sprint
Look up the Global Platform for Data's Marketplace for potential collaborations or synergies.

Risks and Issues

Issue	Mitigation
Each work package and pilot study is progressing, but their objectives remain ambitious and their deadlines are tight.	Progress is regularly reported. Studies will be documented as they are executed. The planning of the September sprint will focus on identifying and delivering key priorities.

Strategic Communication Framework phase 2

Progress

Work continues to progress albeit at a much slower pace due to summer vacation for project team members. The monthly webex meeting was held on July 16 and the leaders of the work packages have reached out to their respective colleagues to confirm commitment to the work that has to be completed by the end of July. Response has been positive with team members confirming their participation and input.

Draft documents are expected by the end of July/beginning of August for wider circulation and consultation within the project team.

A template has been created by the Netherlands to gather case studies and best practices for inclusion in the final products.

Feedback from the CES Seminar on national data strategies has not altered the direction of work package 3. This work will continue, as described last month along with the other two work packages.

Next Steps

Continue to work on the project plan as described last month.

Draft versions of the three work packages are scheduled for wider circulation and input by mid-August.

Risks and Issues

Work is progressing slowly. Without the dedicated contribution of team members, deadlines will be hard to reach.

Consultation with other HLG-MOS groups/activities (ie Developing Organization Capability) is underway to incorporate any information or case studies that have already been collected.

News from the Groups
Blue-skies Thinking	Identifying Topics/Opportunities	IN PROGRESS
Blue-skies Thinking	Follow-up selected topics	IN PROGRESS
Developing Organisational Capability	Skills and Capability Framework	IN PROGRESS	One day sprint session to advance this work was set up on 10 September in Geneva, just before the Workshop on Culture Evolution
	Promotion Forum	IN PROGRESS	Prepared new flyer of the Group that was distributed during the CES at the end of June in Paris.
	Setting vision in NSOs	IN PROGRESS	Work is being done by the Communication team on this activity.
	Other	Workshop on Culture Evolution will take place on 11-13 September in Geneva. We got a confirmation recently, that we will have a session by Consulting company "Like Minds Advisory" about the ABS experience of culture change.
Supporting Standards	Linking GSBPM and GSIM	IN PROGRESS	The task team is meeting regularly every three weeks. A template for the mapping has been agreed. The mapping is being done at two different levels of GSIM: a) a more conceptual level, corresponding to the specification level in GSIM; b) a less conceptual level, corresponding to the execution level in GSIM. The task team is concentrating on phase 5 of the GSBPM both at a design and implementation level. A Diagram depicting the GSIM objects used in the template at the conceptual level together with notes on their definitions and usage was preapared and discussed by the task team. A similar Diagram will be developed at the implementation level. Task team members are reviewing the mapping done for sub-processes of phase 5 according to the definitions and notes in the Diagram. As already mentioned to the Executive Board meeting in May, the task team will be able to do the mapping for phase 5 and also phase 4 and/or 6 of the GSBPM It is likely that the task team will complete the mapping in 2020.
	Core Ontology	IN PROGRESS	The development of the core ontology goes on at a steady pace, via virtual meetings and offline exchanges. The construction of the model first focused on the integrated view between GSBPM and GAMSO, with discussions on the connection between the notions of activity and process. Currently, the work is focusing on the mapping of GSIM objects. A first version of the ontology will be available for presentation at the HLG meeting in November and afterwards submitted to public review.
	Alignment GSBPM and GAMSO	IN PROGRESS	The task team has produced a document specifying the activity to be done. The document is regularly updated after each meeting. Agreement has been reached on the content and the structure of the document. The premises of the document were consolidated. The discussion on the overarching processes in GSBPM and their relationships to GAMSO corporate support activities, started with the OP "Quality management".
	Metadata Glossary	IN PROGRESS	The work is on-going at a regular pace both through webmeetings and off line work. The task team is currently review the definitions for GSIM v1.2 information objects. The review checks whether the definitions provided are compliant with rules (for definitions), precise and exhaustive. In case a definition shows some inconsistency or need for revision, the task team provides sugestions for changes but do not actually change them.
	Other	The Modernisation World Workshop 2019 was quite successful. Besides presenting the work of Unece on modernisation (from Supporting Standards and Sharing Tools Groups), countries presented their experiences and current challenges. The interactive sessions proved to be highly appreciated by participants. They provided a lot of suggestions for further work and improvements of the models. A particularly worth mentioning issue raised, was the need to set up a task team collecting countries needs and challenges in using GSIM to avoid countries adopting different solutions to the same problem. It was also suggested to have a sprint on GSIM next summer aimed at a light revision of the model for handling most urgent issues without waiting for the 5-year revision.
Sharing Tools	Digitizing/editing CSPA document	IN PROGRESS	First the CSPA Document will be updated and edited. The Application Architecture section has nearly been completely rewritten. The 'Common Statistical Production Architecture' section had some significant changes. Smaller changes were made on: Business Architecture, Information Architecture, Enablers. CSPA V2.0 Overview (New) was added.
	Adding Services to Catalogue	IN PROGRESS	Several new services were added to the Catalogue. During the ModernStats World Workshop we will have interactive activities in which potential services will be identified and some selected will be tried to add to the catalogue.
	Communication restated CSPA	IN PROGRESS	Several members were active with preparations for the ModernStats World Workshop. We had several presentations and interactive sessions to promote and advance CSPA. Results will be used.
	Other	See Supporting Standards for ModernStats World Workshop. Results will be used.