- Funding Programme
- Year
- 2021
Modernising the production and dissemination of official statistics in the National Statistics Office of Luxembourg
Main: The Commission helped to Improve accessibility of official statistics disseminated by STATEC through harmonisation and compliance with international standards (SDMX).
Activities: identify gaps (‘as-is’ vs. target state) ; define the target data modelling process and build capacity in STATEC; define the data platform (‘LUSTAT’) architecture and features. Implementation (of target data model and LUSTAT platform) are not in scope.
Context
As a key player in the production of official statistics in Luxembourg and in the European Statistical System, the STATEC must constantly adapt to evolving demands in terms of evidence to support policy analysis and decisions, and to inform the public debate at large. Adaptation entails agility in the capacity to evolve data products (granularity, timeliness of data), as well as improve their accessibility.
This broader goal is hindered by the fragmentation by domain (different tools, process and information models across the statistical domains) as well between the stages in the process (design, collection, processing, and dissemination/reporting stages).
Support delivered
Who: OECD assisted STATEC, with the financial support of TSI 2021 programme
What: Outputs delivered:
- Kick-off meeting inception report.
- Project discovery report.
- Target data model and data process document.
- A software requirements specification.
- Training of STATEC staff (13 staff certified)
- Final report.
When: from Dec 2021 (start of discovery phase) until Mar 2023 (closure). In 2024, the implementation phase of the project started.
Where: the project approach moved from an initially planned “waterfall” approach (sequential delivery) to “agile” (parallel delivery, focused on sequential engagement with each business domain). This approach proved suitable, including to adapt covid constraints.
Results achieved
The project touched multiple aspects: linkage between data accessibility and harmonised data models, the importance of the internal data governance and how to shape it, the development of practical skills and identification of respective roles, the identification of the technical platform (architecture and deployment strategy), the definition of a realistic implementation and migration plan.
All of that contributed to lay solid foundations for the STATEC to engage in the multi-year implementation phase – which started in 2024, with continued OECD continued assistance funded by STATEC – in order to deliver the expected outcomes (efficiencies) and impact (improved data user experience).
Useful links
The LUSTAT externally facing platform - https://lustat.statec.lu/ - which should ultimately capture the improved user experience through better harmonisation of the data. Several deliverables from the project that have been made accessible as open assets reusable by all:
SDMX guidelines:
- Modelling statistical domains and exchange frameworks in SDMX using SIS-CC SDMX Matrix Generator
- Reference Framework for SDMX Structural Metadata Governance
SDMX self-paced online courses under the .Stat Academy:
Also, several features specified under the project have since been delivered in the context of the .Stat Suite open source project managed under the SIS-CC (Statistical Information System Collaboration Community).