1504.0 - Methodological News, Dec qtr 2012  
ARCHIVED ISSUE Released at 11:30 AM (CANBERRA TIME) 12/12/2012   
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Version 2.9 of the SEASABS Suite Released

The Time Series Analysis section (TSA) successfully delivered the release of the latest version of the ABS seasonal adjustment software SEASABS Suite on 19 October 2012. The main new features and enhancements as an analysis and output tool are summarised as follows:

· Implementation of the temporal aggregation method to calculate seasonally adjusted quarterly estimates so as to increase consistency between equivalent monthly and quarterly seasonally adjusted estimates, ensure additivity of monthly and quarterly seasonally adjusted estimates, and to improve the efficiency of the ABS's seasonal adjustment analysis.

· A functionality that estimates and applies seasonal break corrections using regARIMA modelling automatically.

· The capacity to convert prior factor corrections when the decomposition model changes.

· An introduction of a new analytic tool to facilitate research analysis and seasonal adjustment quality checking of time series at a group level.

· Additional quality checks to flag any generated negative seasonally adjusted and/or trend values from a series of non-negative original values.

· A 'Before/After prior correction comparison' tool in SEASABS when considering whether to apply a prior correction to a series.

· An enhanced functionality to allow for multiple seasonal/non-seasonal sub-spans to deal with changing seasonality status within a time series.

· New Hot-keys for commonly used SEASABS commands.

· Improved graphing of trend breaks so as to show all breaks being applied.

These new functionalities streamline TSA practices and increase productivity as well as benefit SEASABS users by improved quality management. A standalone version of the latest release of SEASABS is available to external organisations under licence.


Further Information
For more information, please contact Lujuan Chen (02 6252 6342, lujuan.chen@abs.gov.au) or Philip Carruthers (02 6252 3057, philip.carruthers@abs.gov.au)