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2.3 Strategic objective three: new statistics to support Australia's emerging needs
Box 8 depicts the current ABS integrated data asset, which is built around three core domains of people, business and location. This asset has now reached a high degree of maturity with a large number of administrative and survey data included. In the last 12 months, for example, export and education data has been added. Maintaining the currency of this data asset and adding new data sources will continue to require resources in 2019-20.
The number of uses of this integrated data asset to inform official statistics and policy challenges is growing. Data integration is now a critical element of official population estimates. Without integrating Medicare enrolment information with travel data from the Department of Home Affairs, the ABS would be unable to produce reliable estimates of state and territory population. This follows the cessation of the Outgoing Passenger Card for international travel. A number of ground-breaking projects are now contributing directly to Government policy decisions and/or assessments of the economy. Examples include the allocation of school funding, assessment of wages growth by the RBA, and assessment of health outcomes from certain medicines (see Box 9).
Linking Census data longitudinally (2006, 2011 and 2016) has provided a rich data set that is informing policies such as the COAG initiative Closing the Gap for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People (see Box 10). Current data integration projects with policy relevance that will be conducted by the ABS in 2019-20 include:
2.3.2 Alternative data sources The ABS has long had an ambition of increasing its use of non-survey data, as well as emerging alternative data sources associated with innovation and technological change. Non-survey data includes for example, administrative data collected by public and private sector entities in the conduct of their business, retail transaction data, and web scraped data. Non-survey data has the potential to substitute or complement direct collection of information from business and household surveys. Non-survey data already underpins a large proportion of official statistics including:
Increased use of non-survey data can be more cost effective than surveys, and can eliminate duplication of effort and minimise ‘red tape’ burden on data providers. In 2019-20, the ABS has an ambition to progress the use of innovative data sources as part of our strategic directions. The new Regional and Agricultural Statistics Advisory Group has been established with the specific intent of leveraging alternative and emerging data sources to inform agricultural statistics, place-based socio-economic and environmental information at a regional level and further develop environmental economic accounts particularly for water and land use. Pilot projects are being conducted with the Meat and Livestock Association and the Grains Research and Development Corporation to leverage industry data, and satellite imagery is being tested for use in gathering information about land use. The ABS is conducting research to improve the Census count with the use of administrative data. The research is focused in two key areas: (1) improving the decision on whether each dwelling in Australia was occupied or not on Census night; and (2) developing improved methodologies to provide counts where no Census form is returned, but where the ABS believe the dwelling was occupied on Census night. The ABS will also examine the Census experiences of peer international statistical agencies, and their use of administrative data, to inform future Census research. 2.3.3 Environmental and satellite accounts Satellite accounts are a mechanism to re-use and combine existing information to provide a new perspective or increased transparency to information underpinning existing official statistics. An example of this includes environmental-economic accounts which use a national account framework to allow for an expanded and enhanced view of economic activity through its relationship with the physical environment. Existing publications of water and energy accounts combine ABS economic information, some survey data and administrative data from agencies such as the Bureau of Meteorology, state governments and the DoEE. Experimental estimates of a waste account, prepared in collaboration with the DoEE, have recently been released, and the development of a land account continues in collaboration with state government agencies and DoEE. In 2019-20, the ABS will continue to produce a tourism satellite account in partnership with Austrade, and will look to update the experimental transport satellite account in partnership with Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Cities and Regional Development (both these accounts are funded by these partner agencies). Document Selection These documents will be presented in a new window.
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1006.0 - Australian Bureau of Statistics - Forward Work Program, 2019-20
Latest ISSUE Released at 11:30 AM (CANBERRA TIME) 18/10/2019