8th EMOS workshop ‘EMOS reloaded: new perspectives and instruments for teaching official statistics’, 20 September 2022, Pisa, Italy
The 8th EMOS workshop ‘EMOS reloaded: new perspectives and instruments for teaching official statistics’ was held on 20 September 2022 at Centro Congressi ‘Le Benedettine’ in Pisa, Italy. The workshop was organized in collaboration with the Department of Economics and Management of the University of Pisa.
Around 80 participants came together at the workshop, including representatives of EMOS labelled programmes, EMOS Board members, representatives of organisations producing official statistics invited speakers, EMOS students and graduates, as well as staff from the Department of Economics and Management of the University of Pisa and Eurostat.
Albrecht Wirthmann, EMOS Board Chair and Head of the unit ‘Methodology and Innovation in Official Statistics’ at Eurostat, kicked off the day with a presentation on the current state of EMOS and future perspectives, including the upcoming feasibility study on the development paths for EMOS.
The workshop focus was on recent developments in EMOS, including shared teaching material, newly launched cross-border mobility opportunities and use of open source software in teaching official statistics. Each session included a discussion on how these initiatives can be leveraged to maximise their contribution to the achievement of the objectives of EMOS.
In relation to EMOS teaching material, opportunities to expand and intensify sharing were discussed. Ideas included creating an e-library with shared materials and software libraries. The potential of sharing teaching material to strengthen collaboration within the EMOS network, alleviate the burden of preparing material on individual lecturers, and further harmonise the EMOS curriculum as implemented at individual universities was recognised.
In the session on cross-border mobility opportunities for EMOS students, funded cross-border traineeships and attendance of scientific conferences were presented, as well as the platform developed to facilitate access to these opportunities. EMOS students who took part in these activities and a traineeship supervisor shared their experiences. Participants discussed the need to identify synergies with Erasmus funding opportunities and to keep EMOS graduates involved in the EMOS community once they enter the workforce.
Recent contributions to open source codes available for the EMOS community were presented in the session on the use of open source software in official statistics, which is gaining importance in organisations producing official statistics. A lively discussion on inclusive ways of teaching computing to EMOS students followed, as computing is a crucial skill in organisations producing official statistics and therefore in EMOS curricula. Participants suggested creating a repository of data to be used for teaching.
The keynote speech was delivered by Kaisa Vent, Data Architect at Mainor AS and former member of the Expert group on ‘Facilitating the use of new data sources for official statistics’. Kaisa underlined the importance of the collaboration between official statistics producers and private companies to use privately held data to enhance our statistical output, as a way to tackle current challenges in producing official statistics pave the way for best practices in the future. To illustrate her arguments, Kaisa presented the case of the use of mobile positioning data to produce tourism statistics – a project between the Bank of Estonia, as the statistics producer, and Positium, as the data processor and Kaisa’s former employer.
During breaks throughout the day, participants could familiarise themselves with specific EMOS study programmes and students’ thesis and traineeship projects by viewing the posters prepared and presented by programme representatives and students.
Those who could not participate in person were invited to follow the workshop via a livestream on the EMOS YouTube channel or on the event website. The livestream recordings remain available via the links below.
Recordings