Data Quality Reference Site
Links to Related Sites
The STES Timeliness Framework is a structured collection of documentation on a range of methodological and operational good practices currently used by national statistical organisations (NSOs) for improving timeliness, reducing costs or improving accuracy in the production of short-term economic statistics (STES). It was created by a taskforce of the OECD Short-Term Economic Statistics Expert Group (STESEG), as a tool to assist NSOs in improving the timeliness of the STES they produce, where both summary and detailed documentation on methods can be accessed through the main reference table. The current documentation referenced within the framework comes from 22 different countries, thus it should be diverse enough to be of use to all NSOs that operate under a variety of different circumstances.
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Original Release Data and Revisions Database
This interface provides access to time series data for 21 key economic variables as originally published in each monthly edition of the Main Economic Indicators from February 1999 onwards. This real-time database will enable economists to perform real-time data analysis of econometric models and statisticians to study the magnitude and direction of subsequent revisions to published statistics. Data for all OECD countries, the Euro area, China, India, Brazil, South Africa and the Russian Federation are available. Automated programs to perform revisions analysis are provided.
This site provides reference material on the Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics. It elaborates on the essential elements behind each of the principles and provides examples of policies and practices followed by various countries for implementing the various elements of the Principles (including where relevant hypertext links to the relevant statistical agency websites).
At the request of the UN Statistical Commission, the Statistics Division of the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs established an Expert Group on National Quality Assurance Frameworks (NQAF) in August 2010 in order to develop a Template for a Generic NQAF and guidelines to accompany this template. The generic NQAF template was fully endorsed by the UN Statistical Commission in 2012. Further information on the NQAF can be found at the above website. The NQAF site also contains a detailed list of links to nationally, regionally, and internationally developed data quality references. As of January 2013, this list comprised over 50 countries and regional and international organizations.
The European Statistics Code of Practice sets the standard for developing, producing and disseminating European statistics. It builds upon a common European Statistical System (ESS) definition of quality in statistics and targets all relevant areas from the institutional environment, the statistical production processes to our output: European official statistics. Resources available through the Eurostat data quality site include: Peer reviews of National Statistics Institutes, descriptions of the European Statistics Code of Practice and Quality Assurance Framework, and related information on quality reporting within the European Union.
The real-time data set consists of vintages, or snapshots, of time series of major macroeconomic variables. The data set may be used by macroeconomic researchers to verify empirical results, to analyze policy, or to forecast. This site also provides background information on the utility of real-time data and research conducted using these data.
The Bank's Monetary Policy Committee analyses a wide variety of data to inform its monetary policy decision. Some of these data are revised over time, and taking account of possible revisions is an important part of assessing any data release. This real-time database was constructed in order to improve the Bank of England’s understanding of how data are revised. The main body of the database contains monthly vintages of data published since January 1990. Each vintage shows the data available on the last working day of the month. For a subset of the real expenditure variables, a longer history of quarterly vintages is also available. The database is available in Microsoft Excel format. It is updated every year following the publication of the ONS Blue Book.
The Euro Area Real-Time Database (RTDB) is an experimental dataset that consists of vintages, or snapshots, of time series of several variables, based on series reported in the ECB’s Monthly Bulletin (MoBu).
This website provides a macroeconomic database for Australia which includes measures of GDP, its components, prices, and key monetary and labour market statistics over the last fifty years as published and revised in real time. The vintages of data are collated from various sources and accommodate multiple definitional changes, providing a comprehensive description of the macroeconomic environment as experienced by Australian policy- and decision-makers.
Five dimensions--assurances of integrity, methodological soundness, accuracy and reliability, serviceability, and accessibility--of data quality and a set of prerequisites for data quality are the center of the IMF Data Quality Assessment Framework (DQAF). The DQAF, which is used for comprehensive assessments of countries' data quality, covers institutional environments, statistical processes, and characteristics of the statistical products.