DSIS: Distributed Statistical Information Services

Last update: 03/2004

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What is DSIS?
Objectives
How does it work?
Achievements
Who will benefit?
The role of IDA
Technical information
Documentation

What is DSIS?

Eurostat is responsible for the gathering and dissemination of EU Statistics on a myriad of topics. This is based on input from the Member States, mainly from the corresponding national statistical offices. DSIS is a telematic database network designed to electronically coordinate statistic collection activities.

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Objectives

DSIS aims to ensure the monitored, secure, electronic collection of statistics from national statistical offices bearing in mind the high importance of interoperability as members of the Community Statistical System work in a variety of different IT environments.

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How does it work?

The DSIS project has four components:

• STADIUM (Statistical Data Interchange Universal monitor) is a general service that collects statistical data submitted to Eurostat and distributes it to the Units in charge of processing.
• EDIFLOW identifies all dataflows and all partners involved at the level of the individual sender and receiver whether from Eurostat or national administrations. It promotes the use of telematic tools in coordination with other IDA projects like Trans European Services for Telematics between Administrations TESTA, Data Collection Tools, Statistical Telecommunication interface STATEL, STADIUM, and Generic Statistical Message (GESMES). It may serve as an alert system for overdue data.
• EDI-Standardisation comprises the development, maintenance and adaptation of standardised EDI-messages, making non-proprietary formats available for the exchange of micro-data, aggregated data and classifications.
• EDI implementation aims at the use of a unique non-proprietary data exchange format by as many partners as possible helping those national partners who are currently forced to send their data in a variety of formats depending on the individual Eurostat user requesting the data.

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Achievements

• The project began in 1992 and is expected to become fully operational during the course of 2004-2005.
• All elements of DSIS project are already operational. The implementation of the tools is not yet complete due to the number of partners increasing following the enlargement of the EU. The Stadium system is also used by DG Agriculture, which provides an indication of its success and an example of best practice.

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Who will benefit?

Public Administrations: They benefit from automated feedback of successful data transmission. Information is now received, administrated and dispatched by a central service. This has led to a reduction in delays for interchanging data and faster, more reliable and cheaper publication of data.

Eurostat benefits through quicker and higher quality data transmission thanks to integrated validation procedures, assured integrity of transferred files, automated archiving and less dependence on local data collection environments.

Standardised formats enforce a greater level of harmonisation of metadata between national and international statistical organisations resulting in a higher level of comparability and better facilities for meaningful interpretation and analysis of the statistical information.

Policy makers: This group benefits from the availability of high quality electronic data as it allows for improved efficiency and follow-up of the progress.

Citizens and businesses: They receive data of higher quality within a shorter time.

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The role of IDA

IDA finances the implementation of this project which will be made according to the Architecture Guidelines and with the use of the other IDA generic services such as TESTA, CIRCA and PKI.

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Technical information

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Documentation:

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PCIs related to statistics
Services to Public Administrations in Support of Community Policies
Other Projects of Common Interest