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Concepts

ESS Standardisation: Concepts

The European Statistical System (ESS) is dedicated to improving efficiency through systematic collaboration of the ESS members – these include the European Commission/Eurostat as well as EU and EFTA states’ National Statistical Institutes (NSIs) and Other National Authorities (ONAs). Such collaboration is intensified by the sharing of data, services, methodologies, tools, knowledge, and experience. The implementation of this collaborative system is based on a wide range of tools enabling common production and use of integrated data and infrastructure.  

Standardisation in the ESS is aimed at enhancing this collaboration by providing a framework and arrangements to develop, share and maintain standards in the ESS. These standards are established by consensus in a transparent process with the involvement of potential stakeholders. Therefore, standardisation in the ESS is aimed at realising efficiency gains and improving the quality of ESS statistics by establishing standards for all members.  

In order to achieve this goal, the process of standardisation has been developed for the ESS by the Sponsorship on Standardisation and the ESSnet on Standardisation. This process is the backbone of the proposed standardisation system in the ESS as it provides the realisation of efficiency gains by ensuring consensus, transparency and openness, balance, due process, and proportionality. In order to support this process and the standardisation activities in practice, many additional instruments have been designed, such as the Catalogue of ESS Standards.

The Catalogue of ESS Standards is a collection of normative documents (referred to as “standards”), established by consensus among ESS members and approved by the ESSC according to the procedure of ESS standardisation. The Standards listed in the catalogue provide rules, guidelines, or characteristics for the development, production, and dissemination of European Statistics for common and repeated use by several actors in the ESS. It is thus aimed at achieving the optimal degree of order in the context of the implementation of the mission of the ESS.  

Therefore, standards are one type of normative documents as shown on the attached figure: they are not legally binding, but merely intended to provide an orientation for ESS members as to how European statistics should be developed, produced, and disseminated to ensure smooth collaboration within the ESS.