National Accounts World Wide Exchange Lars Thygesen, OECD May 2007

OECD’s SDMX work Promoting SDMX as the world standard Trying to generalise formats across domains away from stove-pipes Using SDMX in and out of OECD.Stat SDMX web service Joint External Debt Hub with BIS, IMF, WB NAWWE ComTrade with UNSD Data sharing with IMF (and other IOs) Education with Eurostat, UNESCO Country pilots: data collection May 2007

Rationale The idea Benefits to country's NSO web based mechanism report internationally agreed set of data allow any authorised user to access data international organisations agree Benefits to country's NSO One format and one operation for reporting Automated generation of data from source Built-in validation Benefits to international organisations Timely reporting Complete reporting No code misinterpretations May 2007

Architecture: Data Flow OECD Web Server Web Application SDMX V 2.0 XML Schemas XML Files Validated By Schema <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <xs:schema xmlns:xs="http:..XML"...> <xs:element name="Code"> <xs:complexType/> </xs:element>……. XML Files Navigation Structural XML <?xml version="1.0"?> <GenericData> <Value>CANADA</Value> </Data> …… Transformed XML <?xml version="1.0"?> <GenericData> <Value>STRUCTURE</Value> </Data> …… <?xml version="1.0"?> <GenericData> <Value>STRUCTURE</Value> </Data> …… Upload to ANA Database or Output to Other Format Data and Metadata Structure Definitions Process Checks for Updated XML Files <?xml version="1.0"?> <GenericData> <Value>AUSTRALIA</Value> </Data> …… NSOs create SDMX-ML 2.0 data and metadata files in the Generic message format. OECD web application validates NSO data files against official SDMX V 2.0 XML schemas. Structural XML on OECD web server establishes Data and Metadata structure definitions including dimension concepts and related code lists based on a joint questionnaire with EuroStat. Process automatically checks NSO data file URLs for updates on a periodic basis. If files have been updated, OECD caches a new copy onto the web server for feeding the web application interface. This is purely for performance reasons as it is inefficient to load large XML data streams over HTTP at run-time; therefore files are cached onto the web server for fast loading. Structural XML content drives the web applications navigation and usability. When dimensions are selected from the structural XML the cached NSO data XML is accessed to load the statistical content into the interface. The web application allows the transformation of the data XML into formats required for loading into the internal database or to output in other formats such as GESMES, Excel, and CSV. The overall process provides efficiency gains for collecting, validating and loading National Accounts data at the OECD. Cached Data XML XML Files Copied to Server XML Files Content <?xml version="1.0"?> <GenericData> <Value>CANADA</Value> </Data> …… <?xml version="1.0"?> <Genericdata> <Value>AUSTRALIA</Value> </Data> …… May 2007

Prototype V1: Web Interface Previous version of the NAWWE pilot was based on SDMX-ML V 1.0 The interface served as a proof of concept to load NSO data XML in a standard format by selecting data structure criteria from the structural XML. The new version of NAWWE capitalises on improvements with version 2.0 of the SDMX standards. The most important of these improvements are: Definition of hierarchical dimension structures (e.g. ISIC Rev 3 industry classification) The ability to structure and report reference metadata attached at any level of the data structure (i.e any combination of dimension members from ranging from the entire table to an observation. Data selection criteria is driven from the Structural XML Data content is driven from the copied NSO XML data files Dimension criteria and countries can be combined for output May 2007

Joint Eurostat/OECD questionnaire Contains 48 tables New version starting 2007 To be used by OECD from 2007 Yet to be formally adopted by EU May 2007

The NAWWE schema http://stats.oecd.org/nawwe/ SDMX-ML v/2 generic message with 17 common dimensions + table no. codelists based on international standards Will accommodate yearly as well as quarterly national accounts But limited now to annual accounts May 2007

Status spring 2007 Countries: Australia, Canada, US, New Zealand, Mexico Organisations: OECD, ECB, IMF “Almost final” specification of questionnaire end 2006 Data Structure Definitions for all tables but only 11 of them specified as tables Metadata Structure Definition using SDMX Cross-Domain Concepts May 2007

Next steps Four countries expected to report 2007 BEA already shows many OECD tables on its web site www.bea.gov/bea/dn/sna/sna.htm Process: Adapt these tables to new questionnaire Replace these tables by NAWWE tables May 2007

The End Comments and questions lars.thygesen@oecd.org Tour Europe May 2007