Australian Bureau of Statistics
Celebrating the International Year of Statistics 2013

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New ABS Seasonal Adjustment Software Suit Release

SEASABS is a suit of seasonal adjustment software developed and used by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). After two years of additional development and enhancements, a new version (2.6) is planned to be released into the ABS production environment on 13 December 2006 and will be available to external users in early 2007. The new methodological features in this version include:

• Many enhancements to the graphic interface between U.S. Census Bureau's X-12-ARIMA and the ABS seasonal adjustment environment. The improved interface allows us to utilise X-12-ARIMA modelling capability to perform our annual seasonal adjustment analysis (or review).
• A new "Time Series Aggregation and Update" can perform both one and two dimensional seasonally adjusted reconciliations to maintain the additivity of all directly seasonally adjusted estimates based on their original estimate aggregation structure. Our new method is based on the principle of minimising changes to the directly seasonally adjusted level and movement while minimising the risk of introducing residual seasonality.
• A "General Backcasting Facility" which provides best estimate of backcast lengths and consistent backcast methods based on a smoothing back principle and determined by decomposition characteristics of the time series under study. This facility can be used for backcasting original estimates by taking account of measurement impacts induced by major methodological changes such as new estimation methods using Taxation data and the implementation of Australia and NewZealand System of Industry Classification (ANZSIC) 2006.

For further information, please contact Melissa Gare on (02) 6252 7147.

Email : m.gare@abs.gov.au