1. Progress on ESS Validation Project
2nd Meeting of the Working Group Methodology
Luxembourg, 5 April 2017
Eurostat, Unit B1

2. Medium-term goals for ESS validation
Business Outcomes
Goal 1: Ensure the transparency of the validation procedures applied to the data sent to Eurostat by the ESS Member States.
Increase in the quality and credibility of European statistics
Reduction of costs related to the time-consuming validation cycle in the ESS ("validation Ping-Pong")
Goal 2: Enable sharing and re-use of validation services across the ESS on a voluntary basis.
Reduction of costs related to IT development and maintenance

3. May ESSC conclusions
In May 2016, the ESSC approved a set of follow-up actions to the ESS.VIP Validation.
These actions focus on deploying into statistical production the deliverables of the ESS.VIP Validation.

4. Timeline of the project (ESSC May 2016)

5. Focus on Action 1 (Obtaining harmonised and jointly designed validation rules)

6. Task Force on Validation
Mandate of the Task Force endorsed by Working Group meeting on Methodology on 7 April 2016
8 countries participate: Estonia, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Slovenia and United Kingdom
=> Call for interest to revisit composition (linked to ESSnet)
Focus on 7 pilot domains:
-1- NAPS-S, -2- Animal production, -3- Energy, -4- Asylum, -5- Household Budget Survey, -6- International Trade in Services and -7- Short Term business Statistics

7. Mandate until 31 December 2017
Task Force Timeline
Mandate until 31 December 2017
Pilot implementation of the methodological handbook,
Pilot implementation of VTL,
Finalisation of the Business and IT architecture.
4 meetings since June 2016
5th meeting planned on 27th April

8. State of Play – Main achievements
2016 – Q1/2017
TF mandate:
Feedback received on methodological handbook
Business and IT architecture approved by TF Validation and ESS Enterprise architecture board
Assessment of VTL for content validation rules in 5 domains
VTL:
Proof of concept of a VTL interpreter
Contribution to improvement of VTL
Services:
STRUVAL available at Eurostat and exposed for sharing service
CONVAL available at Eurostat in Process Manager

9. VTL – assessement of usability by statisticians
22 questionnaires returned
Covering 5 domains
From 6 countries + Eurostat
who does what
Animal production
Asylum
BOP-ITS International Trade in Services
Energy
HBS
ESA (NAPS)
STS (Short Term Statistics) DE 1 x  x  1 EE  X IE X IT 3 NL 2 PT SI  2    UK
ESTAT
Total Done 6 4 8

10. Results – scores
Medium Level of understanding of VTL: on average between 2 and 4
Not clear if VTL is helpful to understand the rules in EN (score close to 3 for all domains: "Neither agree nor disagree")
Level of understanding varies a lot according to the users for the same domain (some subjectivity or cultural influence may play a role ?)
For one user similar level of understanding for all rules (except for ESA)

11. Results – summary of comments
Rules in plain english and examples of bad/good data are both essential
Rules in VTL may be useful as complement (to limit risks of ambiguity)
VTL is not very intuitive
Need to agree on way to express the rule (negative or positive)
Suggestions for correcting or improving VTL scripts or language

12. ESSnet Validat Integration
Timeline: Jan 2017 to March 2018
6 Participating countries: DE, LT, NL, PL, SE, PT
Activities:
Finalise Methodological Handbook
Create a standard validation report structure
Develop a cost/benefit model for the 3 scenarios of the Business and IT architecture
4 Regional conferences
Outcomes of interest for grant planned at end 2017

13. Main actions for 2017-2019 (1/2) (May 2017) Validation Portal
(summer 2017) Publication VTL 1.1
Standard framework (template, guidelines, best practices, …) for describing and agreeing on validation rules and roles covering progressively all statistical domains
Tools and services …

14. Tools and services -

15. QUESTIONS ?
More info:
for Validation in the ESS at
(See between 2:45' and 4:45')
ESTP course planned on Nov 2017