Prsentation

1
A data sharing pilot between theUS Bureau of
Labor Statistics and the European Central Bank
based on the SDMX standards
Christos Androvitsaneas (ECB), Daniel Gillman
(BLS)
Meeting of the OECD Expert Group on Statistical
Data and Metadata Exchange
Geneva, 10-11 May 2007
2
Motivation

• In an increasingly globalised world, access to
  even detailed statistics in other regions becomes
  important
• For example, the ECB is interested in various
  detailed BLS datasets
• However
• there may be detailed statistics that are of
  remote interest for hubs and other data
  intermediaries
• So, direct data sharing! but statistics must be
  still easily shareable between institutions
  without burdening the source institution with
  extra costs.

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
3
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics side

• SDMX pilot familiarity already with the SDMX
  standards
• Data availability (SDMX-ML format) e.g.
• Consumer Price Index
• Producer Price Index
• Unemployment Rate
• Employment
• Average Hourly Earnings

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
4
European Central Bank side

• ECB interest in U.S. data, e.g.
• Civilian labor force participation rate
• Nonfarm employment
• Civilian labor force
• Civilian unemployment
• CPI-All urban consumers, all items less food
  energy
• Producer Price Index commodity data, finished
  goods
• Intensive use already of the SDMX standards in
  the ECB and the European System of Central Banks
  (pushing and pulling)

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
5
BLS ECB SDMX pilot
URL
ECB Statistical data warehouse
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
6
Conclusions

• Additional benefits (beyond the ones usually
  stated for serving multiple hub reporting
  requirements) for statistical producers from the
  use of the SDMX standards on their web sites
• Considerably increase popularity/usability of
  (even detailed!) data (in which hub
  organisations may not be very interested), for
  example, by academics, journalists and
  institutional users domestically and from other
  countries and regions
• Additional benefits for journalists, academic,
  institutional users of statistics
• Easy/automated access to detailed statistics that
  are not available through hub organizations and
  not easily accessible (retrievable) through
  traditional web pages
• Timely/immediate access, less dependency on the
  dissemination administered by hub
  organisations.

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics