Second Annual ESDS International Conference rated "excellent"

Over 80 participants attended the second annual ESDS International Conference, Measuring the World Around Us, which was held on the 27th November 2006 at the Institute of Materials in London.

The ESDS International conference brings together speakers from international governmental agencies and the research community, and provides an opportunity for users and providers of international data to meet and share their ideas on issues relating to international data research.

Mark Barrett of University College London opened the conference with a talk on the use of the international databanks in energy and environment modeling and policy-making. Andrey Damianov then presented his research on the extent of economic convergence between the Central and Eastern European accession countries and the euro-zone area. A session for young researchers followed with Edna Solomon and Milton Hugo Salas Martinez, both of University of Essex, discussing their research on foreign direct investment

After lunch, the first of the data providers' sessions was held. Cathy Wright of the International Monetary Fund spoke about the Fund's move towards the release of its statistics via a web-based, on-line environment. She also announced that the IMF are considering several new databanks for public release and spoke about the problems faced by intergovernmental agencies in the creation of consistent and clear metadata. Cathy was followed Lawrence Jeffrey Johnson of the International Labour Organisation who discussed the major trends and issues in the global and regional labour markets. The data reveals that globalization has not led to the creation of sufficient and sustainable decent employment opportunities around the world, the key message being that job and income security for the world's workers is often an afterthought in global development. Jeff also discussed the balance faced by data providers between good coverage (i.e. the provision of the greatest number of indicators for the greatest number of countries) and good comparability (i.e. harmonization of sources, sampling procedures, methods and definitions). Valentina Kalk of the World Bank was the final single speaker of the day, presenting of the role of the World Bank Development Data Group. She also highlighted the ways intergovernmental organizations work together to establish data exchange processes and methods, help countries improve their statistical capabilities and build consensus on defining international agreed standards.

Chaired with considerable élan by Denise Lievesley, the former director of statistics at UNESCO, the data providers' panel discussion proved lively and informative. Questions included:

Are your current approaches to metadata scalable?
The IMF replied that seven international organizations were involved in the SDMX (Statistical Data and Metadata Exchange) project. The project differentiates between two different types of metadata, structural (e.g. euros, dollars, millions, seasonal adjustment etc) and referential (description of content). One output of SDMX will be agreement to a universal set of referential metadata. This led onto a discussion of Web 2.0 technologies and the need for the intergovernmental organizations to develop of new models for their data dissemination strategies.

ESDS International provides a great service for the UK but how can I share the data with colleagues from in other countries, in particular developing countries?
Cathy Wright of the IMF replied that it is vital to get information out to less developed countries 'in order to promote transparency and democratic principles' and that the IMF are very open to extending the ESDS International model elsewhere. The World Bank and International Labour Organisation are also seeking new ways to widen the dissemination of data in the developing world.

Are the rumours that the IMF plan to discontinue the Government Finance Statistics true?
One of the recommendations of a recent IMF audit was that the GFS be discontinued as it has comparatively low usage. However, the statistics department believe very strongly the data has a great deal of value and they are investing into a high frequency version that will be incorporated into the IFS. It may be that the GFS will then be discontinued but no decision has been taken at this point.

Shouldn't publicly funded data be freely available?
The general consensus of the panel was yes, publicly funded data should be freely available. The question is how that goal can be realistically achieved. All of the data providers discussed how their respective organizations addressed the tension between 'mission and money'. For example, the World Bank has a system of discounting for lower income countries and a network of depository libraries around the world. Valentina argued that, aside from generating revenue (which enables the development of new products and upgrades to the data), charging for data allows dissemination to take place in a more effective way, as it provides incentives for intermediaries. The IMF said they give much of their data back to countries for free, and that there is a movement towards open dissemination throughout the statistical community, but it takes time for international organizations to move from one path to the other. Jeff Johnson of the International Labour Organisation pointed out that we have already paid for the data through taxation. More importantly, he argued, if we are going to promote effective policies of poverty alleviation, we need to strengthen the capacities of developing countries to produce and analyse information, and improve coordination between the international communities to collect and disseminate data.

The conference was enjoyed by all with animated discussions after each talk. Comments from the day included:

• "an interesting and valuable conference";
• "the structure of the conference was excellent, mixing applications from researchers and presentations by international organisations";
• "the conference talks were very informative";
• "the structure of the day was well organised. The strategy of questions after each presentation worked very well";
• "the conference was very beneficial for me and I felt more informed as a result";
• "I liked the presentations and found the discussions very useful for my research;"
• "As a data librarian it's enlightening to see how data is used by researchers for such diverse projects;"
• "everything seems to have been very well organised - congratulations!"
• "It was excellent"

The conference programme, abstracts and slides are available at:
www.esds.ac.uk/international/news/conf2006.asp, and a podcast of the full event is available at: www.esds.ac.uk/international/podcasts/conf2006.xml.