census hub project - key factors

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The Census European Hub Project Eurostat

Francesco Rizzo

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Census Hub project - Key factors

Main objective: the dissemination of the result of the censuses in EU should provide the users with an easy access to detailed census data that are methodologically comparable between the MSs and structured in the same way

Starting point: Eurostat Census TF April 2007.– analysis of the alternatives– launch of the pilot

Supervision: the Census TF and Census WG

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The idea of the Census Hub

SDMX standards

Pull mode

Data sharing

Hub

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The Census Hub pilot project phase I – main results

Verified the feasibility of the project Developed the central software (Eurostat) Developed 4 NSI SDMX infrastructures (DE, IE, IT, PT) Produced 4 case studies by the involved NSIs Produced the “Census Hub Web Service Implementing

Guidelines version 1.0” by Eurostat Produced the specification for the pilot phase II Eurostat technical advice through bilateral meetings (IT,

PT, LV, BG)

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The Census Hub pilot project phase IImilestones and interim results

Involving other Member State in the project– BG, CZ, EE, MT, SI

Providing technical advice in implementing a SDMX IT architecture– Bilateral technical meetings (HU, MT, SI, FI, UK)

Designing a generic reference SDMX architecture for NSIs– Development of some open source components

Developing and testing additional functionalities for the central application– New GUI– Cache system

Developing all the necessary DSDs related to more than 100 hypercubes

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Census Hub pilot project architecture

The central Hub – Eurostat side

The web service – NSI side

The pilot hypercube– Sex– Age– Current Activity Status– Geography

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Eurostat CensusHub

National Statistical Institute

National Statistical Institute

The Census Hub Project

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Benefits in participating to the project

The following benefits will be real: participants will be part of a project that will allow them to share experiences among the different actors, both statisticians and IT personnel, at different levels (planning, production, etc.); participants will build an IT infrastructure useful not only for the pilot exercise but also for their 2011 census data warehouse using standards recognized at international level; the same SDMX architecture could be used in other projects with few or no changes.

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Costs in participating in the project Costs for implementing an SDMX infrastructure needed for the Census Hub Pilot Project are limited and can be embedded in the more general project that each NSI will support for the 2011 Census; the use of an XML-based data format will help to reduce costs of implementation as follows:

– many NSIs are already using, or planning to use XML as the basis for their data management and dissemination systems;

– a wide selection of IT commercial applications and tools are available to work with XML-based data;

– expertise for working with XML is readily available and will often be available in-house;

knowledge and software developed by the participants at the first phase of the pilot are available and can be used immediately

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Conclusion

The Census Hub pilot project phase I has demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed architecture

The Census Hub pilot project phase II will represent a consolidation of the entire project, both from a technical and a participation point of view

The used architecture represents the most advanced example of the data sharing architecture detailed in the SDMX standards

As the Pilot has been planned as simple as possible in order to let all the NSIs participate with a minor effort, this project is a good occasion for all those who want to start using SDMX

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Useful information

Useful link: X-DIS Census Hub

http://circa.europa.eu/Members/irc/dsis/x-dis-xensus-hub/library?l=/census_documents_1&vm=detailed&sb=Title

http://91.194.86.67:8090/CensusHub2/ User : censusdemo Password : Estatdemo09