Collecting methodological information on regional statistics THE MARS PROJECT Collecting methodological information on regional statistics

Project background and intention 2000: Collection of methodological information (meta-data) for regional statistics in candidate countries of East Europe 2002/2003: Creation of the MARS database with information collected in 2000 2006 New MARS project: Update and extension of the existing MARS datasets and inclusion of the new candidate countries

Project structure Understand and evaluate the existing MARS dataset Prepare the collection of new information (test and final questionnaire) Collect and evaluate the information Metadata import into the MARS database

Domains covered All domains of the regional database (i.e. except Urban Audit data) In total 13 domains divided into 32 sub-domains For methodological reasons “Energy” became a separate domain

Problems Administrative problems Methodological problems Technical problems Problems with cooperation

Administrative problems Original timing too ambitious working periods for participating countries too short National Statistical Institutes in some countries not responsible for the data collection for all domains and sub-domains Information had to be collected by the NSI from the responsible administrations

Methodological problems Use of information already existing at Eurostat difficult Different quality per country Needed information missing Information coming from test questionnaires Insufficient number of countries volunteered Comparison of countries for each questionnaire difficult

Technical problems Misclassification of some topics in the existing (old) MARS database MARS software needs to be updated MARS structure (content) needs to be adapted to the new questionnaire

Difficult cooperation with some countries Close to the deadline for the delivery of the final questionnaires, some countries informed Eurostat that they will not send any information at all Some countries could not keep the deadlines for the completion of all questionnaires They still can send completed questionnaires

State of play 22 Sept. 06

State of play - 22/09/2006 Excellent Good Estonia, Ireland, Lithuania, Hungary, Slovakia Good Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Greece, France, Cyprus, Latvia, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, Finland, United Kingdom

State of play - 22/09/2006 Could be improved No contact Boycott Spain, Italy, Netherlands, Luxembourg No contact Malta, Sweden Boycott Germany, Austria

Future work Evaluation of the received questionnaires Contacts with participating countries in order to check unclear responses If necessary visits to different countries to solve difficult topics Import meta information into the database

Thank you for listening questions are welcome