1. Item 5 Modernisation of the EU-SILC Production
17th MEETING OF THE TASK-FORCE ON THE REVISION OF THE EU-SILC LEGAL BASIS, Luxembourg
Item 5
Modernisation of the EU-SILC Production
24 – 25 September 2018 1

2. Modernization of EU-SILC production project Key information
Objectives: 1. To adapt the EU-SILC production to the IESS and domain-specific legislation in the field. 2. To increase the performance, reliability, cost-effectiveness and ease of maintenance of the production workflows and processes. 3. To enhance transparency of the production process. Time line: 2018 – 2022

3. Working Group on Living Conditions June 2018 Survey Questions to Member States
Envisaged start for implementing IESS for EU-SILC (data year)
Current programming environment for the production of national SILC data
Which possible changes are to be expected in which of the coming years?
Suggestions to improve Eurostat's EU-SILC production based on best practice
Interest in involvement and support to the EU-SILC modernisation project

4. Results of Member States Survey June 2018 Q1, Q2, Q4
16 Member States (MS) replied to the survey with detailed information about
Envisaged start for implementing IESS for EU-SILC – incl. details about the MS' current and future production process
Most responding MS reported using at least partly SAS for the production of national SILC data, but a number of countries also use SPSS, STATA, Blaise, R or nationally developed programmes. Suggestions to improve Eurostat's EU-SILC production based on best practice
14 out of 16 MS reportedly do not envisage significant changes in the programming environment.
A significant number of MS (AT, FI, SE, NL, UK, NO) wanted to be closely associated to the project. Others also were willing to support the project as needed/ as resources allow.

5. Results of Member States Survey June 2018 Q3 – Suggestions to improve Eurostat's EU-SILC production based on best practice
"Given that a speedy data delivery and production is a prioritized goal for SILC, the production should be organised in a way that supports speed."

6. Results of Member States Survey June 2018 Q3 – Suggestions to improve Eurostat's EU-SILC production based on best practice
"Suggestion on what would make it easier for us to develop a speedy production process and hence deliver data to you more quickly: 1. We aim at a high degree of standardization in the production process regarding the core. Our goal is to come as close to a “just push the button”-situation as possible in the production of the core SILC. Everything that you do that will force us to make changes in the core, like asking us to place module questions in the core part of the interview, will prevent us from reaching that vision. Hence, a stable core, in every part of the production process, is desirable. This way of thinking could also be applied to the modules, especially the modules with a 3-year rotation. It would benefit us if the modules can be treated as modules also from a production perspective, so that we can reuse such elements as the questionnaire and the production code every time the module returns."

7. Results of Member States Survey June 2018 Q3 – Suggestions to improve Eurostat's EU-SILC production based on best practice
"Suggestion on what would make it easier for us to develop a speedy production process and hence deliver data to you more quickly: 2. It would also be helpful if you develop a process for receiving data that takes into account the different delivery dates for survey and administrative data according to the legal act."

8. Results of Member States Survey June 2018 Q3 – Suggestions to improve Eurostat's EU-SILC production based on best practice
Further comments received: "It would be more efficient, if Eurostat would give us feedback on all errors that show up in the checks at one time in order to shorten the discussion. In turn we will put more emphasis on looking into new flag errors, especially concerning the module." "It would be necessary to prepare better programs for checking ad hoc modules. It would be fine if these programs will be checked before sending by Eurostat. In checking programs is a lot of checking of flags, but almost no checking about contents of the survey." "Have R code of all programs prepared by Eurostat (data checks and calculation of main indicators)"

9. Results of Member States Survey June 2018 Q3 – Suggestions to improve Eurostat's EU-SILC production based on best practice
"We would like that Eurostat inform us about methodology of calculation in the case that some new indicators are published." "We would suggest to include the confidence intervals in the output of the main indicator produced by Eurostat programs and the significance of the estimates’ differences, taking into account that most indicators are complex and the calculation of their standard error needs linearization or other specific procedures."

10. Results of Member States Survey June 2018 Q3 – Suggestions to improve Eurostat's EU-SILC production based on best practice
"We want calculations about persistent risk of poverty to be based on 6 years long panel." "A review of some of the indicators produced should be carried out. For instance, the longitudinal indicators package presents changes in persistent poverty for very small age groups which are based on a very [small] sample sizes. Perhaps the indicators programme should automatically hide all indicators based on observations less than 50?"

11. Results of Member States Survey June 2018 Q3 – Suggestions to improve Eurostat's EU-SILC production based on best practice
"Eurostat's database – it is not clear how these data are fill[ed] in the tables. When we send the data, some of the data are fill[ed] in »immediately«, but some tables are empty or it is not clear when data will be in the database. We expect that there will be release calendar available for NSI’s in advance prepared by Eurostat." "The availability of UDB import SAS programs to have a complete dataset with all countries microdata by survey year also is considered useful (since the .csv files are separated by survey year and country)"

12. Results of Member States Survey June 2018 Q3 – Suggestions to improve Eurostat's EU-SILC production based on best practice
"We would like that general common guidelines for defining “Breaks in series” are created." "Better documentation of break in series. We think that it would be necessary to publish at least main reason for break in series for each break, for example change of question, new source of the data, mode of collection etc. These data should be available to public."

13. Results of Member States Survey June 2018 Q3 – Suggestions to improve Eurostat's EU-SILC production based on best practice
"A revision of the EU-SILC guidelines as it was presented and discussed in the 13th meeting of the Task Force on the revision of the EU-SILC legal basis in October 2016."

14. Thank you for your attention