Third International Conference on Establishment Surveys (ICES-III)
June 18 - 21, 2007 - Hyatt Regency Montreal - Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Program

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KEYNOTE SPEAKER
Business Surveys: Past, Present, and Challenges for the Future
Monday June 18, 2007 6:30-7:30 pm
Robert W. Edwards

Robert W. Edwards
Director, Statistics Department,
International Monetary Fund

As director of the Statistics Department at the International Monetary Fund, Edwards plays a key role in fostering the highest quality standards for consistency, coverage, and transparency in economic and financial statistics. Working with countries around the world, he promotes the implementation of best practices in statistics in order to enhance the quality of national statistical systems and the data they provide to users.

Edwards leads the Statistics Department’s mission to provide outstanding statistical services within the IMF and to serve the needs of the international statistical community at the national and international levels.

Prior to joining the IMF in 2004, Edwards was deputy Australian statistician, economic statistics, at the Australian Bureau of Statistics. His focus throughout his career has been on statistical and user services, corporate services, population and social statistics, and economic statistics.

ICES-III conferees will learn insights from Edward’s global experience and understanding of the requirements of both producers and users of official statistics.
CLOSING DINNER AND PANEL PRESENTATION
Thursday, June 21, 2007, 5:30 p.m.–9:30 p.m.
The Future of Using Administrative Data Sources for Statistical Purpose
Moderator: Fritz Scheuren, vice president, statistics at NORC, University of Chicago
Panelists: Heli Jeskanen-Sundström, director general, Statistics Finland
Stephen Penneck, executive director for surveys and administrative sources, Office for National Statistics
Don Royce, director general, Methodology Branch, Statistics Canada
Background: Statistical offices are under budgetary pressure to do more with fewer resources. As technology for handling large volumes of data becomes more efficient, information from administrative sources is increasingly being considered to improve efficiency of survey designs—and even to replace direct data collection. Statistics based on administrative sources are relatively inexpensive, and they impose no additional burden on providers. However, several issues need to be considered and may cause frustration: conceptual differences, timeliness, and nonsampling errors.


Content: Panelists will debate future strategies for ensuring that statistics on businesses and establishments are fit for their purposes, as greater use is being made of data from administrative sources.

  • How should a policy jointly emphasize quality, burden, and cost?
  • How are the users affected, and how do they react?
  • How could administrative sources be used to improve surveys?
  • What are the challenges faced in integrating data from different sources?
  • How can quality be assessed and influenced?
  • Are current methods adequate, or do we need a new theory ?
Bios of Panelists
Fritz J. Scheuren Fritz J. Scheuren
Vice President, Statistics at NORC, University of Chicago
Scheuren works on mainly sampling issues in applied settings. In recent years, these applications have largely involved human rights matters, both overseas and in the United States. Among other practitioner honors, he has received the Harry Roberts Statistical Advocate Award (from the American Statistical Association’s Chicago Chapter) and the Shiskin Award for Contributions to Economic Statistics (from the National Association of Business Economists and the Washington Statistical Society).
 
Mrs. Heli Jeskanen-Sundström


Heli Jeskanen-Sundström
Director General, Statistics Finland

Jeskanen-Sundström joined Statistics Finland in 1968 and has since worked in a variety of statistical areas, including national accounts, business statistics, and coordination of official statistics in Finland. She served as director of business statistics from 1992–1996. Prior to her appointment as director general, she served as deputy director general and a permanent adviser of the Board of Statistics Finland from 1996–2001. Currently, she is a member of the National Information Society Council and deputy member of the Senate of the University of Helsinki.

Jeskanen-Sundström also has participated actively in international statistical cooperation and acted as speaker or chair at several international meetings and conferences. She was president of the International Association for Official Statistics from 2003–2005, having served as president-elect from 2001–2003 and vice president from 1997–1999. She is a member of the Bureau of the Conference of European Statisticians (UNECE/CES) and a vice chair of the Governing Board of the UNESCO Institute of Statistics. She served as vice chair of the UN Statistical Commission in 2006.

Jeskanen-Sundström holds a master’s degree in economics from the Helsinki University, Finland.
 
Stephen Penneck


Stephen Penneck
Executive Director for Surveys and Administrative Sources, Office for National Statistics (UK)

Penneck joined the Office for National Statistics (ONS) in 1997 and has worked in his current job since September 2005. He has much experience as a government statistician, primarily in economic statistics. Prior to his current job, he was head of the Statistical Outputs Group at ONS.

Penneck currently has responsibility for all aspects of ONS surveys and administrative sources, including the continuous household surveys, business surveys (e.g., Annual Business Inquiry, Prodcom, and the consumer and producer price indices), and financial surveys. He also has responsibility for the Statistical Modernization Program.

Penneck also has provided policy advice to former National (UK) Statistician Len Cook, taken responsibility for liaison with ministers and international relations, and taken forward the development of national statistics. He completed a five-month secondment to the Australian Bureau of Statistics in early 2002.

Earlier jobs include heading the national accounts division in the ONS, with responsibility for producing regular estimates of major time series—including GDP—and acting as chief adviser on statistics at the DTI. Stephen also has worked on statistical research at the Office of Fair Trading.

Penneck studied for his BSc (Soc Sc) in economics and statistics at Southampton University and holds an M SocSc in econometrics from Birmingham University. He is a fellow of the Royal Statistical Society, a chartered statistician, a member of the International Statistical Institute, and an author of articles in Economic Trends and Statistical News.
 
Don Royce Don Royce
Director General, Methodology Branch, Statistics Canada
Royce earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mathematics (statistics) from the University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, in 1973 and 1974, respectively. Since that time, he has worked as a mathematical statistician in the Methodology Branch of Statistics Canada. He spent the first nine years of his career working on a variety of special surveys, conducted primarily for external clients. This was followed by 11 years of working on the Census of Population, where he led the Research and Testing Project for the 1991 Census and was subsequently responsible for the measurement of data quality for that census. In 1994, he moved to Business Survey Methods Division, where he was involved in a variety of business surveys, including a comprehensive redesign of Statistics Canada’s program of annual business surveys. He became director of that division in 1999, and, in 2004, was named director general of the Methodology Branch. In his current position, he is responsible for all statistical methods used in Statistics Canada’s programs and for the program of small-area and administrative data based on tax returns. He is a member of the American Statistical Association’s Census Bureau Advisory Committee, an elected member of the International Statistics Institute, and an author of articles published in Survey Methodology and the Journal of Official Statistics.