Online Program

Integrating Alternative and Administrative Data Into the Monthly Business Statistics: Some Applications from Statistics Canada (307970)

Keywords: data integration, administrative data, scanner data, small area estimation

In recent years, Statistics Canada has expanded the use of administrative data in many of its programs in the context of modernization. Unsurprisingly, the monthly business statistics programs were no exception with some of them starting to integrate alternative data and or expanding the use of administrative data. These new approaches will reduce response burden, provide more granular data while improving or maintaining quality. This paper will present applications in the use of alternative or administrative data in three monthly business programs. The first one is the replacement of survey data by the Goods and Services Tax data in the Monthly Survey of Foods Services and Drinking Places. The second one is the use of scanner data to replace survey commodity data in the Retail Commodity Survey. The last one is the use of small area estimation techniques that integrate survey data and administrative data in the Monthly Survey of Manufacturing. For each project, a description of the context, the methodology, the impact and the issues will be described. To conclude, future potential avenues and challenges for the monthly business statistics programs will be discussed briefly.