1. Interoperability issues in the implementation of SIMS
Item 2.2 – Standards Working Group 2-3 July 2018 Luca Gramaglia, Eurostat unit B5

2. "Once for all purposes" reporting
One of the key objectives for the creation of SIMS was to achieve "once for purposes" reporting.
One of the ambitions was that Member States would be able to map their own metadata systems to SIMS. Producing a SIMS-compliant report for Eurostat would have been simply a matter of harvesting the information already reported by domain managers for national purposes.

3. "Once for all purposes" reporting
NSI
Eurostat
National concept 1
SIMS concept 1
National concept 2
SIMS concept 2
National concept 3
National concept 4
SIMS concept 3
National concept 5

4. European Interoperability Framework

5. European Interoperability Framework
The EIF defines 4 layers of interoperability:
Legal interoperability: Ensuring that organisations operating under different legal frameworks, policies and strategies are able to work together.
Organisational interoperability: The way in which public administrations align their business processes, responsibilities and expectations to achieve commonly agreed and mutually beneficial goals.
Semantic interoperability: Semantic interoperability ensures that the precise format and meaning of exchanged data and information is preserved and understood throughout exchanges between parties.
Technical interoperability: This covers the applications and infrastructures linking systems and services. It include interface specifications, interconnection services, data integration services, data presentation and exchange, and secure communication protocols.

6. Quality and metadata reporting in the ESS from the EIF point of view
Regulation 223/2009
CoP, QAF, GSBPM
SIMS
SDMX

7. Interoperability issues
Different approaches to quality reporting in legal acts
National vs European production processes
High degree of customisation and low degree of reuse
Use of non-standard syntax elements

8. Quality reporting in legal acts
Layer affected
Legal interoperability
Description of the issue
The specific arrangements for the implementation of the generic obligations established by regulation 223/2009 are often laid down in domain-specific implementing acts.
These do not consistently refer to SIMS concepts and may therefore encourage diverging practices.

9. Concrete example
Implementing Reg. 881/2017 on quality reports for the Census.

10. Potential solutions
The problems caused by this issue should not be overemphasised. Eurostat usually maps the concepts mentioned in the legal acts to SIMS concepts even when SIMS terminology is not explicitly mentioned.
However, to avoid potential issues, Eurostat will develop a common approach for the inclusion of metadata and quality reporting in legal acts.
Improvement action
Availability
Develop a common approach for the inclusion of metadata and quality reporting in legal acts
Q1/2019

11. National vs European production processes
Layer affected
Organisational interoperability
Description of the issue
There is not a one-to-one alignment between what is considered to be a single process or domain at European and national level. The number and granularity of metadata or quality reports requested by Eurostat differs from those produced for national purposes.
This means that it may be difficult for member States to reuse for the purpose of European quality reporting quality information gathered for national purposes

12. Concrete example
In the area of Short-Term business Statistics (STS), Member States are asked to provide 25 different metadata files to Eurostat.
Many NSIs see however STS as a single statistical production process/domain, and therefore produces only one metadata file for national purposes.
The end result is that NSIs have to do double-work: they have to produce one aggregated file for national purposes and 25 detailed ones for European purposes. The goal of "once for all purposes" reporting is not achieved.

13. Potential solutions
Achieving a one-to-one correspondence between national and European processes is difficult, as this can very much depend on the internal organisation of each NSI.
Mitigation actions can however be considered:
Provide a clearer overview of the number and granularity of the metadata and quality reports requested from MS
Better overview of active metadata flows in the ESS-MH
Establish a link between EDAMIS datasets and ESS-MH metadata flows
Give MS the option to provide certain information at domain level or even at country / organisation level.

14. Potential solutions

15. Potential solutions Improvement action Availability
Clearly indicate in the ESS Metadata Handler which metadata flows are currently actively used for national metadata and quality reporting
Q2/2019
Establish a link between the inventory of datasets in EDAMIS and the inventory of metadata flows in the ESS Metadata Handler
Q4/2018
Give Member States the possibility to provide information at different levels of granularity
Q4/2019

16. High degree of customisation
Layer affected
Semantic interoperability
Description of the issue
SIMS defines a set of concepts needed for metadata and quality reporting.
In order to cater to the information needs of specific domains, the content of these items is often customised, either by using HTML templates or by introducing sub-concepts.
Customisations risk breaking the semantic interoperability SIMS is supposed to provide, as they may change the meaning or expected content for a given SIMS concept.

17. Why is customisation so common?
Some of the more common reasons that domain managers ask for the introduction of more specific information:
Detailed methodological information needed for compliance monitoring purposes
Standardisation of responses for certain concepts (e.g. providing a pre-defined set of possible answers via a code list)
Receive information at the level of specific variables within a dataset / survey

18. Concrete example
The LFS Quality Reports expect the following HTML template to be filled in for concept 6.2 (Sampling error).
The requested information changes the meaning of the “Sampling error” concept by focusing on a specific aspect of it.
Member States would be unable to directly reuse information compiled at national level for this concept, as it would not fit the structure of the template proposed by Eurostat.

19. Potential solutions
A multi-pronged strategy can be pursued to confront this problem:
Unneeded customisations can be prevented by a wider use of domain-specific guidelines.
Sub-concepts should be preferred to HTML templates, as they offer a more transparent and SDMX-compliant manner of signalling customisations. As a general rule, customisations should not replace the base concept, but only further detail it. This means that the content of the base concepts should not be modified.

20. Potential solutions

21. (phase-out of grouping functionality needed for full implementation)
Potential solutions
Improvement action
Availability
Expand the use of domain-specific guidelines
Q3/2018
Replace HTML templates by sub-concepts
(phase-out of grouping functionality needed for full implementation)

22. Insufficient reuse of information
Layer affected
Semantic interoperability
Description of the issue
Domains that have implemented both the ESMS and ESQRS strcutures must currently submit two different files to Eurostat.
As a result, the high degree of overlap between the two structures is not exploited and the information for shared concepts is duplicated.
This goes against the principle of "once for all purpose" reporting.

23. Potential solutions
Request that Member State supply a single report containing all SIMS concepts. The ESMS and ESQRS reports can then be extracted from this single input file. This approach has recently been successfully piloted in the HICP domain.
Improvement action
Availability
Allow Member States to submit a single report containing all SIMS concepts in case both ESMS and ESQRS are needed
Q3/2018

24. Use of non-standard syntax elements
Layer affected
Technical interoperability
Description of the issue
The SDMX standard offers the technical and syntactic basis for the exchange of metadata and quality reports.
Over time however, Eurostat has introduced some custom elements that are outside of the SDMX standard and that therefore cause interoperability issues.
The most notable among these is the so-called “grouping” functionality, which specifies how concepts in the MSD can be grouped in an HTML template for easier visualization.

25. Concrete example
The "grouping" functionality allows ESS-MH administrators to define how sub-concepts should be displayed via an HTML template.
The resulting SDMX-ML file thus mixes visualisation and structural elements in a way that is not easy for a national metadata provider to replicate independently (see screenshot below).

26. Potential solutions
The grouping functionality is mainly used to organise sub-concepts within a table structure. This need can be addressed in an SDMX-compliant manner by representing the table as an SDMX dataset structured by an SDMX Data Structure Definition.
The introduction of this new functionality will need to be accompanied by precise specifications for Member States who wish to build interoperable systems.
Improvement action
Availability
Phase-out the grouping functionality
Q4/2019

27. Potential solutions MSD DSD Concepts Dataflow Grouped by Structured by
Annotation
Concepts
Dataflow
SDMX dataset
Represented by
Structured by

28. Potential solutions
Concept heading
Webform generated based on DSD

29. No automated transmission of metadata files
Layer affected
Technical interoperability
Description of the issue
It is currently not possible to automate the submission of metadata files to Eurostat.
Member States who are able to create SDMX-ML metadata files from their metadata systems must manually upload them to the ESS-MH, which is clearly inefficient.

30. Potential solutions
Eurostat is currently investigating the possibility of allowing Member States to use EDAMIS to transmit metadata and quality reports.
Improvement action
Availability
Automate metadata and quality report transmission via the use of EDAMIS
Q1/2019

31. Interoperability layer
Summary
Interoperability layer
Improvement action
Availability
Legal
Develop a common approach for the inclusion of metadata and quality reporting in legal acts
Q1/2019
Organisational
Clearly indicate in the ESS-MH which metadata flows are currently actively used for national metadata and quality reporting
Q2/2019
Establish a link between the inventory of datasets in EDAMIS and the inventory of metadata flows in the ESS-MH
Q4/2018
Give Member States the possibility to provide information at different levels of granularity
Q4/2019

32. Interoperability layer
Summary
Interoperability layer
Improvement action
Availability
Semantic
Expand the use of domain-specific guidelines
Q3/2018
Replace HTML templates by sub-concepts
(phase-out of grouping functionality needed for full implementation)
Allow Member States to submit a single report containing all SIMS concepts in case both ESMS and ESQRS are needed
Technical
Phase-out the grouping functionality
Q4/2019
Automate metadata and quality report transmission via the use of EDAMIS
Q1/2019

33. Thank you for your attention! Any questions?