Barteld Braaksma

Access to data sources for official

statistics in The Netherlands

Mission of the European Statistical System

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“We provide the European Union, the

world and the public with independent

high quality information on the

economy and society on European,

national and regional levels and make

the information available to everyone

for decision-making purposes, research

and debate.”

Presupposes availability of adequate data sources

Legal situation for statistics in NL

Statistics Act (2003/2017)

– Grants free access to government registers

– Obliges to use registers instead of surveys where possible

– Allows to collect additional data

– Gives full control on methods to be used to DG CBS

Administrative decree on data collection (2003/2016)

– Specifies organisations from which data can be collected

– Specifies categories of data that can be collected

– Does not include data on individual customers and users

Various generic regulations (EU+NL) apply as well!

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Is the time of statistics over?

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https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jan/19/crisis-of-statistics-big-data-democracy

(National Statistician UK)

Big data- opportunities for official statistics?

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New statistics

More geographical detail

Improved timeliness

Burden reduction

Higher efficiency

…but we can’t do it alone!

CBS big data partner network

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Social tension indicator based on Twitter

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https://www.cbs.nl/en-gb/our-services/innovation/project/social-tension-indicator-based-on-social-media

Measuring the internet economy in The Netherlands

Main research question:

“What is the importance of the internet to the Dutch economy?”

The aim of the research project was fourfold:

1. Determine a pragmatic definition of “the internet economy”

2. Show the importance and size of the internet economy in NL

3. Show the possibilities of new measurement methods

4. Explain differences from regular statistics/concepts

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High-level interest in internet economy…

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Press conference with Henk Kamp, Dutch minister of Economic Affairs

High-level interest in internet economy…

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Prime minister Mark Rutte and Prince Constantijn (twitter and facebook)

Daytime population based on mobile phone data

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Which level of detail?

How to present? Is it useful?

Access issues with big data

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Reputation and image risks

Privacy and ethical questions

Commercial sensitivity

Cost of making data available

What about scientific use?

But also advantages! Contribution to society Relevant information for enterprises (TTP!) Better insights in own data for companies

Contracts and agreements (examples, non-exhaustive)

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For production

Scanner data- Major retail chains

Online housing market- jaap.nl

Social media- Coosto

For research and evaluation

Mobile phone data- Vodafone/Mezuro

Car traffic- TomTom

Websites- Dataprovider

Proposal to adapt Dutch legislation

Adapt data collection decree to include selected big data

Mobile phone traffic

Electronic financial transactions

Public transport chipcard

Smart meters/thermostats

Goes through Ministry of Economic Affairs

Trade-off between statistical use and burden for enterprises

Not an overnight process…

European coordination welcome (level playing field)!

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Hal Varian ‘on workers and managers’

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I keep saying the sexy job in the next ten years will be statisticians (…) Because now we really do have essentially free and ubiquitous data. So the complimentary scarce factor is the ability to understand that data and extract value from it. I think statisticians are part of it. (…) Managers need to be able to access and understand the data themselves.

The McKinsey Quarterly, Januari 2009:

• Chief economist at Google

• Emeritus professor at Berkeley