Sharing statistical services and solutions

What is this action about?

The European Statistical System (ESS) produces pan-EU statistics thanks to cooperation between EU countries and the European Union's statistical office Eurostat. However, although national statistics organisations have similar business processes to deliver statistics, the sharing of IT solutions and their interoperability is still not widely spread. The national statistical systems are difficult to adapt in response to new business needs shaped by the digital transformation. To tackle this issue, the ESS has agreed on strategic objectives – Vision 2020. This ISA² action will build on Vision 2020 projects and propose cheaper, more effective standardised services and solutions for the production and dissemination of statistics.

What are the objectives?

The objective is to provide and share cost-saving statistics services and solutions within the European Statistical System, in particular for the production and dissemination of statistics.

The project involves:

• Providing a reference architecture for statistics processes and information systems to allow for the integration of shared services and the interoperability of production systems
• Developing common infrastructure to support component sharing
• Building shared services based on existing components or certified open source statistical libraries
• Guiding statistics organisations in aligning their architecture to benefit from sharing services
• Delivering a software package for the dissemination of statistics

What are the benefits?

For the European Statistical System and Member States

• Cost-effective modernisation of producing statistics
• Improved statistics processes by sharing best practices
• Lower cost of producing and disseminating statistics

For other European Commission services

• Cost-savings and reusable services for the production and dissemination of statistics

For citizens

• Easier access to EU statistical products
• New high quality statistical products 

For Eurostat

• Efficient dissemination of EU statistics
• Improved ability to promote statistical standardisation and best practices
• Increased quality of statistics
• Improved interoperability of the production and dissemination of national statistics systems

What has been achieved?

• Updated statistical reference architecture
• Service Catalogue for shared statistical services to be reused
• Implementation of new reusable services and solutions
• Reusable Dissemination Chain
• Detailed benchmarking of MS architecture in 3 architectural domains: Data validation, European system of Business Registers, Data and metadata management service, Linked open data.

What are the next steps? 

• Follow-up the remaining procurements until their end
• Provide software deliverables on reuse platforms (service catalogue, Joinup)
• Finalise benchmarking and recommendation towards MSs in 3 domains
• Close ISA² action