1. The quality project
Agenda point 6.4
Bas de Vet

2. Content of the presentation
Introduction (what is quality?)
History of the project
Quality reports regional GVA, GFCF and employment
Quality reports regional population
Quality project regional unemployment
Quality project, Luxembourg, 5 December 2003

3. Quality project, Luxembourg, 5 December 2003
What is quality?
The concept of quality project goes beyond data quality alone.
The quality project is embedded in the management philosofy of the European Statistical System (ESS) being:
European Foundation for quality management (EFQM) that has its roots in
Total quality management.
Source: Leadership Group on Quality (September 2001)
Quality project, Luxembourg, 5 December 2003

4. Key framework Components for ESS Quality management
for output data quality reporting, ESS provides the framework
relevance
accuracy
timeliness
accessibility and clarity of the results
comparability
coherence
completeness
Quality project, Luxembourg, 5 December 2003

5. Quality questionnaires
ESS framework has led to the
Eurostat Proposal for a Standard Quality Report (Eurostat, 2000)
On this report, we based the
Quality questionnaire regional GVA and
Quality questionnaire regional population
Quality project, Luxembourg, 5 December 2003

6. Quality project, Luxembourg, 5 December 2003
History of the project
November 1998 : SPC agreed on "Quality Assurance for Regional Key Indicators"
1999: call for tender.
1999: Statistics Netherlands tendered.
January 2001: Contract for the first year.
QR regional GVA, GFCF and employment and CEIES-indicators.
April 2001: Letter by DG Eurostat about quality project
March 2002: Workshop in Porto.
August 2002: Contract for the second year.
QR regional population and CEIES-indicators.
December 2003: Contract for the third year is in the pipeline
QR regional unemployment and CEIES-indicators.
Quality project, Luxembourg, 5 December 2003

7. Quality project, Luxembourg, 5 December 2003
QR by whom?
Work of the contractor is limited to the current member states.
Acceding and candidate countries follow a different path. There are not yet results available for these countries.
An introduction about the quality project has been done in Prague.
Quality project, Luxembourg, 5 December 2003

8. Overview quality project
Assessment of the indicators used for the allocation of the Structural Funds to the objective 1 and 2 regions and used in the Periodic Report.
The indicators are:
regional GDP per head of the population in PPS
regional GVA, GFCF and employment
regional unemployment
Quality project, Luxembourg, 5 December 2003

9. Organisation of the quality project
Two task forces to assess the work of Eurostat:
The step from total GVA to regional GDP; with some focus on PPS;
regional unemployment with focus on registered unemployment and data from LFS.
Contractor for:
QR regional GVA, GFCF and employment
QR regional population
QR regional unemployment
Workshops for discussing the results.
Quality project, Luxembourg, 5 December 2003

10. Quality project, Luxembourg, 5 December 2003

11. Quality project, Luxembourg, 5 December 2003
GVA
Results workshop proved to be very useful.
In the meantime, we produced a quality report with the “light version” for accuracy for regional GVA.
Purpose is to put the QR-light version on the CIRCA-site.
Quality project, Luxembourg, 5 December 2003

12. Preparation of the QR regional population
Asked for comments by Mauri Nieminen (Finland), Mrs. Roma Chappell (UK), Mrs Margarita Cantalapiedra (Spain), Valerio Terra Abrami, Marco Marsili (Italy) and Harri Cruijsen (NIDI, Netherlands).
Besides, I have got comments from the division of the population statistics in the Netherlands (Harold Eding and Kees Prins).
Still thanks for the co-operation.
Quality project, Luxembourg, 5 December 2003

13. Quality project, Luxembourg, 5 December 2003

14. Some tentative first conclusions
Purpose of the survey must be kept in mind.
National POP methodologies are available. The regional QR is based on that.
Most countries proved to be confident to very confident about the accuracy of their data.
Register based versus non-register based.
Definition of population is not fully harmonised. De jure and the facto definition. This might influence comparability of the data.
Quality project, Luxembourg, 5 December 2003

15. Workshop regional population
Still apologies for the delay.
Provisional dates March 2004.
Precise information follows when we have the definite contract with DG-Regio.
We still hope to receive information from UK and Greece.
Quality project, Luxembourg, 5 December 2003

16. QR regional unemployment
We have to wait until we have a contract.
Procedure:
preparation of the questionnaire ( we like to follow the same procedure as for the QR regional population)
I will do this in close co-operation with the experts of the LFS.
For the remaining procedures, I will inform you when we have more clarity about the administrative matters.
Thank you for the attention !
Quality project, Luxembourg, 5 December 2003