Welcome to the European Statistical System Collaborative Network (ESSnet) Web Intelligence Network project, which began in April 2021 and will run until March 2025. This is a continuation of the previous ESSnet Big Data and ESSnet on Big Data II projects, which commenced in 2016. The aim of the network is to contribute to National Statistical Institutes (NSI) understanding the need to change and advance the production of national statistics. New technologies and data sources have tremendous potential to improve statistical production. They offer a way to generate statistics in an effective, accurate, and cost-effective manner.
Maintaining the required pace of change is a significant challenge, as NSI's must innovate to maintain a high standard in their outputs. International cooperation between NSI's and other official bodies are one way to help speed up change.
The aim is to establish a Web Intelligence Network (WIN) across the European Statistical System (ESS) and beyond. The project is currently creating a Web Intelligence Hub (WIH) that will enable the integration of new data sources into national statistical production systems.
The project is looking to target valuable statistics based on an array of non-traditional data sources. The plan is to build a Web Intelligence System for the ESS and potentially worldwide. This will provide a greater chance to integrate web data into official statistics rather than just NSI’s efforts.
The project has four main objectives that it is looking to deliver:
- To promote and train users in web intelligence competencies and how to use the WIH services.
- To create software to translate online job advertisements (OJA) and online-based enterprise characteristics (OBEC) into the WIH and move towards the statistical production stage.
- Identify more web data sources and define new use cases that can be integrated into the WIH.
- Develop all-inclusive business architecture, methodology and quality frameworks with indicators to produce statistics with web data.
17 organisations from 14 countries make up the project team. This group is supported by experts from organisations outside of the project group, known as the Web Intelligence uSER group (WISER). The WISER will help with knowledge sharing, the quality of the methodology used, and promoting the team's project work.
The project team is then broken down into four work packages, and each one will focus on different aspects of the project:
- Work Package 1 fundamental goal is to build awareness of the WIH in producing official statistics across the ESS network and provide training and a help desk.
- Work Package 2 fundamental aim is to develop software to help produce official statistics using internet data sources.
- Work package 3 explores non-traditional data sources for official statistical production. The data sources included are:
- Real estate
- Construction
- Online household appliances prices
- Tourism
- Business registers
- Traffic camera images
- Work package 4 will develop the methodology and determine quality measures for statistical outputs.
Long term, the project is designed to deliver a sustainable and operational environment to produce official statistics using web data at European and national levels. Having a flexible and modular approach will allow further extension towards new data sources. Area's which will be considered for future addition will be, but not limited to, the labour market and telecommunications.
The WIH’s target audience is NSI's and other organisations involved in producing official statistics. The project's outcome uses new data sources, which to date have scarcely been implemented in official statistics, so all will benefit from the hub.
The above gives you an overview of the project and the goals it is looking to achieve. Over the next five years, we aim to keep you updated on how the project is proceeding and the conferences we will be attending. If you do see us at a conference, whether this be online or face to face, do come along to say “hello”.
The Trusted Smart Statistics – Web Intelligence Network project (number: 101035829 – 2020-SmartStat) is funded by the European Union.
Published 3 February 2022