1. Martine Durand Chief Statistician, OECD
Nowcasting techniques to improve timeliness
30th CCSA, Muscat, Oman September 2017
Martine Durand
Chief Statistician, OECD

2. Background
Growing demand - from markets, analysts, policy makers - for more timely data.
With ‘information gaps’ increasingly filled by private providers – sentiment indicators, Google Trends.
Putting pressure on relative importance given to accuracy, compared to timeliness, in official statistics.

3. Better meeting user needs…
…through improvements in
Compilation methods - new technologies may provide scope for improved timeliness without any impact on quality - e.g. digital data collection;
Survey approaches: firms may be able to respond in a much more timely fashion than when surveys were first designed;
and also through greater adoption of ‘nowcasting’ techniques.

4. OECD is experimenting with nowcasting
OECD exploring nowcasting approaches to meet user demands both for bounded and unbounded domains, complementing efforts such as the CLI
For GDP zone totals
OECD aPaPPartner Country release lags for Quarterly GDP Estimates, %
TiVA
The iterative nowcasting procedure

5. But there are challenges
OECD (and other IOs) efforts towards nowcasting are likely to be of lower quality, than those that could be undertaken by NSOs
How to improve take-up of nowcasting approaches, without adversely affecting accuracy and credibility of statistics?

6. Issues for discussion by CSSA (1)
What mechanisms should/could be used by international organisations to raise awareness within national statistics offices of nowcast approaches used and needed by IOs?
Should national statistics agencies be encouraged to develop nowcast estimates of data they currently provide to international organisations, and, if so, what disclosure rules are needed?
What standards and dissemination strategies are needed to determine if nowcast estimates can be published? Are common guidelines needed?

7. Issues for discussion by CSSA (2)
Should a conference be organised/or surveys undertaken to determine practices across countries and IOs with a view to sharing international best-practices.
To improve timeliness, what more can international organisations do, beyond nowcasting, to disseminate best practice in national statistics compilation methods and survey design/questions?