UNECE Statistics - Metadata and the Statistical Business Process

STATISTICS

METIS FRAMEWORK

Common Metadata Framework - Part C

Part C - Metadata and the Statistical Business Process

What is the purpose of this part?

Statistical metadata is relevant to all stages of the statistical business process, although many statistical agencies have had an initial focus on metadata being published with statistics during the dissemination phase. There are a growing number of examples of statistical agencies viewing statistical metadata as part of their data collection processes.

This part of the manual will contain information, case studies, best practices and other material to assist the metadata developer in a national statistical office design and develop a statistical information system relevant to the business requirements of their office.

Part C is currently under development and will be structured around the following topics:

Introduction
purpose, definitions, scope
Statistical Metadata Systems and the Statistical Business Process
generic statistical survey lifecycle model, examples system overviews/models
Statistical Metadata in each phase of the Statistical Business Process
metadata classification, examples of metadata created and reused at each phase of the life cycle
Systems and Design Issues
IT architecture, metadata management tools, standards and file formats, version control and revisions, outsourcing versus in-house development
Organizational and Workplace Culture Issues
roles and responsibilities, metadata management team, training and knowledge management approaches, partnerships and cooperation

Current activities for developing this manual

The CMF Editorial Board are currently coordinating work on the activities listed below. Contributions or questions are welcome and can be addressed to the UNECE Secretariat at support.stat@unece.org.

agreement on a generic statistical business process model comprising of 9 phases (1. Specification of needs, 2. Develop and design, 3. Build, 4. Collect, 5. Process, 6. Analyse, 7. Disseminate, 8. Archive, 9. Evaluate). Refer to the proposals made at METIS 2008 meeting below.
development of a statistical metadata classification, following a review of existing classifications (eg SDMX, MetaNet)
documentation of case studies (revised template)