Increasing availability of data at the European level –
How to make recommendation A. (Table Design)
operational
A small remark in the context of the Recommendations for
confidentiality management in business statistics
8th meeting of the Expert Group on statistical disclosure control (EG SDC),
1 December 2016
Topic 3.4 „Business Statistics Recommendations “
Sarah GIESSING
Federal Statistical Office of Germany
Division Mathematical Statistical Methods
© Statistisches Bundesamt, Mathematical – Statistical Methods Division
Recommendation A. Table design
“When designing the standard data requirements for European
business statistics, careful consideration needs to be given to
the level of detail in all the dimensions of the tables, in order to
optimise the balance between the desired high level of detail
and the resulting confidentiality suppressions especially in small
MS”
© Statistisches Bundesamt, Mathematical – Statistical Methods Division
Recommendation A. Table design
Idea (Maxime Bergeat, 24/02/2016) (To make it operational):

Eurostat to propose to MS several table designs (with a hierarchical
structure to enable comparability between countries) for European
demands and then MS can choose table design depending on:
 Size of the country
 Rules used for primary suppression in the country
 Number of suppressed cells in the tables
 Consistency with dissemination of other results from the same
source at national level
© Statistisches Bundesamt, Mathematical – Statistical Methods Division
How to make this work…(comments Sarah)

MS-choice designs are useful on NUTS levels below MS-level,
obviously
 MS-choice designs used at the MS level, can be expected to be
useful for the information content of the national tables.
 MS-choice designs used at the MS level can be useful for the
information content of the European level tables, ONLY if:
 A. There is a single, fixed design and all MS deliver the data to
Eurostat according to this design
 Otherwise no progress: Eurostat can't provide NACE-3-level
European data, if smaller countries don't deliver NACE-3level data (for example), even if the large MS do deliver.
 B. Countries chosing a more aggregate MS-choice design
commit themselves not to publish more detailed data at the
National level
© Statistisches Bundesamt, Mathematical – Statistical Methods Division
How to make this work…(comments Sarah)
If A and B is agreed, then

Eurostat can compute the European figures at the detailed (fixed
design) level.
 Eurostat can do disclosure control taking into account that the
detailed level figures remain unpublished anyway for some MS
 i.e. prefer (give low costs to) such cells when selecting/computing
secondary suppressions
© Statistisches Bundesamt, Mathematical – Statistical Methods Division