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ESSnet on Sharing Common Functionalities in the ESS

(SCFE)

FINAL REPORT

ESSnet SCFE - FINAL REPORT – February 2018

ESSnet SCFE - FINAL REPORT – February 2018 2

ESSnet PROJECT FINAL REPORT

Grant Agreement number: 11141.2015.002-2015.841Project acronym: SCFEProject title: ESSnet on Sharing Common Functionalities in the ESSPeriod covered: from: 01/01/2016 to: 31/12/2017

ROUPPERT Benoît, Head of IT Production and Infrastructure Division, Insee Tel:+ 33 (0) 141 17 58 24 E-mail: [email protected] website address:http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/cros/content/sharing-common-functionalities-ess_en


Index Summary.........................................................................................................................................5 Results of the project......................................................................................................................7

WP1 : ESS guidelines and procedures Partners: ONS (leader), Insee, SL, SURS, INE, Destatis, GENES.........................................................................................................................7 WP2 : Centre of Excellence (CoE)Partners : SL (leader), ONS, Insee, SURS, INE, Destatis, GENES........................................................................................................................................9 WP3 : Apply services Partners: Insee (leader), ONS, SL, SURS, INE, Destatis, GENES......11 WP4 : Identification of reusable services and analysis of requirements Partners : SURS (leader), Insee, ONS, SL, INE, Destatis, GENES.....................................................................17 WP5 : Fostering Open Source solutions Partners : INE(leader), Insee ONS, SL, SURS, INE, Destatis, GENES.......................................................................................................................22 WP6 : Management & dissemination Partners: Insee (leader), ONS, SL, SURS, INE, Destatis, GENES.......................................................................................................................25

Project management......................................................................................................................28 Dissemination action towards the ESS.........................................................................................29


Summary

This ESSnet contributes to the ESS.VIP project "shared SERVices". It aims at: increasing awareness on how to use and take part in an ESS service oriented organisation; delivering the necessary tools for NSIs to start engaging in the implementation of a Service Oriented Architecture and share their solutions with others; improving the mechanism which consists in taking a copy of a component and integrating it into the NSIs environment not having available standards for defining a statistical service.

The various tasks of the project are divided into 6 work packages (WP) which should operate for the whole duration of the project (ie: 24 months):- WP1-ESS guidelines and procedures: the objective of this WP is to provide a set of guidelines, procedures and templates for identifying, developing, sharing and implementing statistical services in local information system architectures;- WP2-Centre of Excellence: the objective of this WP is to prepare the description of the setup of a Centre of Excellence to keep up to date either a CSPA service catalogue or CSPA compliant ESS service catalogue and a repository for sharing experiences and knowledge related to service oriented architectures in practice;- WP3-Apply services: the objective of this WP is to demonstrate that a service developed by an ESS Member “A” (developing organization or DO) can be implemented in ESS Member “B” (re-using organization or RO) and be integrated to its business processes; - WP4-Identification of re-usable services and analysis of requirements: the objective of this WP is to identify services which can be candidates for re-use in the ESS and to analyse the functional and technical requirements of a service for re-use in at least 3 ESS members; - WP5-Fostering open source solutions: the objective of this WP is to provide information and tools regarding the state-of-art of open source solutions, that are available or planned, that can be used to better help and foster statistical production;- WP6-Management and dissemination: objectives are the overall project management, coordination, reporting to Eurostat and dissemination towards stakeholders.

Partners in the ESSnet on Sharing Common Functionalities in the ESS (SCFE) are the following:- Insee (France): coordinator of the project & leader of WP3 and WP6- ONS (United Kingdom): WP1 leader;- SL (Lithuania): WP2 leader;- SURS (Slovenia): WP4 leader;- INE (Portugal): WP5 leader;- Destatis (Germany);- GENES – CASD (France).

The project was designed according to 3 main drivers: Be concrete and pragmatic: the main priority is to build services that actually work, even if they are not very sophisticated. The implemented services should be simple to understand, install and use. All the deliverables should also reflect this orientation and be as operational as possible. The ESSnet favours hands-on experience and experimentation. Be complementary with other works: the partners wish to cooperate with all the relevant bodies and stakeholders. To this aim, regular liaison with other bodies both within and outside the ESS (ie. Task force on shared services, Common Statistical Production Architecture- CSPA members, architecture working group, ESS Enterprise Architecture Task force) is priviledged. In each case, good coordination and communication will enable the project to gain in efficiency and prevent from reinventing the wheel. Be open: open-source services will be preferred. A specific budget is reserved to help organizations to open-source their services. The ESSnet work will be conducted openly (for example on open collaborative platforms), and the statistical community will be consulted and be able to react or contribute. The partners try and involve interested NSIs


and other national statistical authorities, through the organisation of mini-sprint meetings, bilateral visits to some NSIs/authorities and the organisation of a workshop.

Finally in order to market the SCFE project, the following logo was chosen:

All the deliverables produced by the consortium are publicly available on CROS portal: http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/cros/content/sharing-common-functionalities-ess_en


http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/cros/content/sharing-common-functionalities-ess_en

Results of the project

WP1 : ESS guidelines and procedures Partners: ONS (leader), Insee, SL, SURS, INE, Destatis, GENESThe aim was to provide a set of guidelines, procedures and templates for identification, development, sharing and implementing statistical services in local information system architectures.

Task/Work package number 1 Start Month: End Month:

M1M24

Title ESS guidelines and proceduresPartner 1 ONS 2

INSEE

3SL

4SURS

5INE

6Destatis

7GENES

8 9 10 11 12 13 14

Objectives To provide a set of guidelines, procedures and templates for identification, development, sharing and implementing statistical services in local information system architecturesDescription of workTo provide a set of guidelines, procedures and templates for identification, development, sharing and implementing statistical services in local information system architectures. It is important that this workpackage does not duplicate work done elsewhere so the key activity will be to draw on material already developed through initiatives such as CSPA, ESSnet on Standardisation, ESS Enterprise Architecture, UK Government (GDS Service Standard), other national guidance from participating organisations if available.Sub-Tasks:

a) Identification of sources and assessment of their relevance and suitability b) Production of draft reports detailed belowc) Review of reports d) Share with others e.g. CSPAe) Finalise reports

It is proposed that rather than holding specific meetings to develop the deliverables below, ONS will produce the initial drafts and circulate by email or on the shared repository by M6 enabling comments to be posted for discussion at a coordination/ sprint meeting. Further updates can be reviewed online with the final version being discussed and agreed at the end year coordination/ sprint meeting. Also note that further updates may be needed, particularly to D1-4 during Year 2 of the project to reflect experience and outcomes of other workpackages. Deliverables

D1-1: Draft Guidelines for the identification, development, sharing and implementing statistical services in local information system architecture and on an ESS SOA platform - M9

D1-2 Draft Report: Templates for describing statistical services in conceptual, logical and physical levels (Service Definition, Service Specification, Service Implementation documents) - M9

D1-3 Draft Report: “Hands on” How to expose a statistical service on an ESS SOA platform and how to integrate a service exposed on an ESS SOA platform in a local business processes - M9

D1-4 Final versions of D1-1, D1-2 & D1-3 - M12 D1-4bis Possible updated version of D1-4 (based on the outcome of the other work-packages) - M24


D1-1 / D1-4 Final guidelines on sharing statistical services These have been produced and cover: - The identification and description of statistical services that can be shared- The development of reusable statistical services and the available standards that enable reuse- The implementation and sharing of services across member states and organizationsEmphasis is given to the reuse of existing frameworks (GSBPM, GSIM, CSPA, EARF, etc.), with, with examples of their application. The guidelines cover also practical aspects not addressed in these frameworks, such as service assessment, expression of user / business needs, and the coordination role of the Centre of Excellence management of the supply and demand side for statistical services.

D1-2 / D1-4 Brief report on the information of use to ESS that is missing from the CSPA templates This deliverable was produced.Concurrently the CSPA implementation groups carried out preliminary work to refresh the CSPA templates. It was decided not to produce a new set of templates to not duplicate the work of the CSPA implementation group, but to, instead, feed the ESS requirements into CSPA. This work has to be carried out collaboratively with CSPA during M12-M24. The revision of CSPA is taking place in 2018.

D1-3 / D1-4 “Hands on” How to expose a statistical service on an ESS SOA platform and how to integrate a service exposed on an ESS SOA platform in a local business processesThis deliverable consists of three parts. The main document includes guidance on how to deploy and implement statistical services in the ESS / Eurostat shared platform. A second document is a set of slides that describes aspects of the guidance in D1-1 in a “hands-on” fashion. A third document is a checklist to facilitate the sharing and reuse of statistical services.

OtherIn addition to the final deliverables in D1-4, WP1 delivered a description of service granularity that was shared with CSPA.


WP2 : Centre of Excellence (CoE)Partners : SL (leader), ONS, Insee, SURS, INE, Destatis, GENESThe objective was to prepare the description of the setup of a Centre of Excellence to keep up to date either a CSPA service catalogue or CSPA compliant ESS service catalogue and a repository for sharing experiences and knowledge related to service oriented architectures in practice.


M1M24

Title Centre of ExcellencePartner 1

SL2 INSEE

3ONS

4SURS

5INE

6Destatis

7GENES

8 9 10 11 12 13 14

Objectives Describing the setup of a Centre of ExcellenceDescription of workPrepare the description of the setup of a Centre of Excellence to keep up to date either a CSPA service catalogue or CSPA compliant ESS service catalogue and a repository for sharing experiences and knowledge related to service oriented architectures in practice.Sub-Tasks:

Delineate the role and responsibilities of a Centre of Excellence. Define procedures for maintaining and keeping up to date an ESS shared service catalogue using

cloud platform.Define the management of open source software solutions, suitable structure and operational mechanism.

Provide service gap analysis and describe how to link from the service catalogue to registries (incl. version management) containing the source code.

Define procedures on certification of statistical services and open source software packages. Envisage communication and coordination activities for the Centre of Excellence Description of operational activities: procedures on legislation, ownership, supporting activities

(training, maintenance etc.), guidelines on installation and integration, templates to provide a common structural framework to support the bodies developing and sharing generic software solutions.

Define help desk structure for NSI’s to exprice their needs. Define procedures for ad-hoc support, consultancy and/or expert reports, on request of ESS member states.

Deliverables D2-1 First version of the description of the Centre of Excellence M12 D2-1bis Possible updated version of D2-1 M24

D2-1 First version of the description of the Centre of Excellence (M12) Deliverable D2-1 “Description of the setup of the Center of Excellence on Shared Services (CoE SERV)” was prepared. The document consists of five sections and two of them have further subsections:

Background and scope Roles and responsibilities of the CoE SERV Governance

Project management by Eurostat; ESS task forces; Project steering groups; Directors' groups; ESS committee and partnership group; Vision Implementation Group (VIG) and Vision Implementation Network (VIN).

Organizational setup Description of the action

Support and consultancy; Guidelines and documentation;


Identification of reusable statistical services and candidate service assessment (AAA assessment frame-work);

Analysis of functional and technical requirements of reusable statistical services; assessment of reusable statistical services;

Catalogue data maintenance, update and archive; Dissemination/promotion of reusable statistical services;

and each of them is described.

Results: first version of the description of the Center of Excellence.

Problems and corrective measures: none

D2-1bis Possible updated version of D2-1 Deliverable D2-1 “Description of the setup of the Center of Excellence on Shared Services (CoE SERV)” was updated after Wiesbaden workshop. The final version including the last comments was provided on the 15th of December on the cloud in both versions (PDF and DOC).


WP3 : Apply services Partners: Insee (leader), ONS, SL, SURS, INE, Destatis, GENESThis work package aimed at demonstrating that a service developed by an ESS Member “A” (developing organization or DO) could be implemented in ESS Member “B” (re-using organization or RO) and be integrated to its business processes. The work package included implementation of 3 such services and the table below described the initial list of services that could be selected:

Task/Work package number

3 Start Month: End Month:

M1M24

Title Apply services

Partner 1 INSEE

2 ONS

3SL

4SURS

5INE

6Destatis

7GENES

8 9 10 11 12 13 14

Objectives Demonstrate the feasability of implementing in an NSI the service developed by another NSIDescription of work1. Implementation of 1, 2 or 3 statistical services developed by other ESS MembersThis work package will demonstrate that a service developed by an ESS Member “A” (developing organization) can be implemented in ESS Member “B” (re-using organization) and be integrated to its business processes. The work package shall include implementation of up to 3 such services. The implementation in the re-using organization(s) will preferable go beyond the Proof of Concept level, reaching real business implementation of services or a level close to that.Four services have been identified as being in production or almost in production and being good candidates for sharing or replication. These services are : “Time series services”, “Questionnaire generation service”, “Metadata dissemination service” and “Administrative Data Encryption service (CDA)”. Three of these services should be opensourced ( “Time series services”, “Metadata dissemination service” and “Administrative Data Encryption service (CDA)”).Three more services have been identified (“Respondent Authentication”, “Online Survey respondent management”, “Metadata Management System”) but their development is still ongoing and it is not sure that they will be mature enough to be shared in the course of this ESSNet project.

The final list of services will be decided during the first meeting of the consortium, using a classical benefits/costs approach or a SWOT approach.

Time series serviceDescription: Wrapping of some of JDemetra+ functions in a REST web service. In particular, the following functionalities are available: seasonal adjustment (Tramo-seats, X12, structural models...), modelling (Tramo, Reg-ARIMA, detection of outliers). Other functions are in development and could be added if on time: benchmarking/balancing (Denton, Cholette, multi-variate Cholette), temporal disaggregation, time series translator (SDMX, Excel, SAS data files, CSV...), calendars generator.DO: INSEELicense: EUPLCurrent state: development for CSPA wrappingCSPA compliance: fullPossible types of re-implementation: share, reuse

Questionnaire generation serviceDescription: Automated generation of questionnaires (web, PDF) from their DDI description.Coltrane is a cross-cutting platform for web surveys at INSEE. It comprises several modules: contact management, data workflow, survey management, web portal, questionnaire generation. The latter is based on a tool named ENO that generates web questionnaires from their description in DDI 3.2 (http://www.ddialliance.org/). Coltrane was put into production in March 2015 for a first business survey, and 34 other surveys will be integrated over the next two years. Future work also includes new output formats for ENO (paper, fillable PDF) and the development of a questionnaire design tool able to produce the DDI input in a user-friendly manner.Coltrane's questionnaire generation service was conceived from the start in a perspective of genericity and reusability. It is based on open standards and formats, and the output web forms can easily be customized


http://www.ddialliance.org/

by means of transformations or style sheets. All the components (questionnaire design tool, questionnaire generation tool, metadata repository) communicates through REST web services which can be adapted, mocked, etc.DO: INSEELicense: proprietary, but wish to open-sourceCurrent state: productionCSPA compliance: to be assessedPossible types of re-implementation: share, reuse

Metadata dissemination serviceDescription: access to different types of information about statistical concepts and classifications (list of items, correspondence tables, etc.)DO: INSEE and GENESLicense: open-sourceCurrent state: productionCSPA compliance: in progress (see below)Possible types of re-implementation: share, reuseComments: a Retrieve Classification Service is being defined as one of the CSPA 2015 services. The service currently in production at INSEE could be one implementation of this service with some additional integration development. The GENES provides statistical data for researchers and is actively working on innovative solutions for disseminating metadata.

Administrative Data Encryption service (CDA)Description: CDA application main purpose is to encrypt and trim administrative and confidential data that has to be transferred from Portuguese public administrations to Statistics Portugal, through a private cloud (ownCloud) with WebDAV technology (open source).For encrypting predefined fields, such as VAT number, ID Card, Social Security, etc., it uses an algorithm of SHA-256 on the sensitive fields of an ASCII file, granting citizen confidentiality and preventing its identification. This encrypted fields will function as primary keys in a central database, the destination of this data flow. For other predefined fields such as Personal Name or Address, it trims the field to the first 3 characters of the first word, and the last 3 characters of the last word. We may use this fields for quality control.Before exchanging data to the private cloud, an input file is confronted with previous agreed structure (metadata). Only if it grants the correct syntax, it will be succeeded to apply encrypting and trim operations to some of the sensitive fields, at client machine. With all this done, it will be able to send the encrypted file via application to the private cloud.DO: Statistics PortugalLicense: Open Source code developed in Delphi XE7 64 bits platform, and WebDAV technologyCurrent state: ProductionCSPA compliance: to be assessedPossible types of re-implementation: share, reusePossible reusing organization (RO): all European institutions, it only needs to change country specific algorithm for VAT number, ID Card, etc.Comments: Currently in production at Statistics Portugal, collecting administrative data from: Social Security Agency, Tax Authority, Justice, etc., to build a central database to be used for the Census 2021. The application and security procedures were scrutinized, audited and approved by the Portuguese Data Protection Authority.

Respondent AuthenticationDescription: This service creates the unique access codes that each respondent will require to complete their census questionnaire electronically. This service is also responsible for authenticating the unique access codes entered by respondents.DO: ONSLicense: TBCCurrent state: DevelopmentCSPA compliance: Not assessedPossible types of re-implementation: share, reuseComments: Maybe too complex given that different countries may have different requirements around this service.Online Survey respondent management


http://www1.unece.org/stat/platform/display/pandp/Retrieve+Statistical+Classification+2015

Description: This service will encompass the set up and provision of electronic self service help systems for Respondents, initial engagement with respondents, provision of access codes to Respondents. monitoring outstanding responses, reporting on response rates and for ensuring appropriate follow up plans are applied to case records to maximise response rates and data quality.DO: ONSLicense: TBCCurrent state: Discovery (i.e. pre-development)CSPA compliance: Not assessedPossible types of re-implementation: share, reuseComments: This service may potentially be broken down into smaller components. Some work has been done to date for a pilot, but is subject to substantial change.

Metadata Management SystemDescription: Metadata management systemDO: ONSLicense: TBCCurrent state: Discovery (i.e. pre-development)CSPA compliance: Not assessedPossible types of re-implementation: share, reuseComments: Still at very early stages of identifying minimal product needed in an SOA environment.Deliverables

D3-1 Interim report on the implementation of 3 statistical services (among which one is open source) M18

D3-2 Final report on the implementation of 3 statistical services (among which one is open source) M24

D3-1 Interim report on the implementation of 3 statistical services (among which one is open source) M18

The main goal of this work package is to demonstrate that a service developed by an ESS Member (the « developing organization », DO) can be implemented in another ESS Member (the « re-using organization », RO) and be integrated to its business processes. We further precise that this integration should be more than a proof-of-concept level but reach a level close to a real production level.

The 1st coordination meeting helped select three services from the original list: a Time Series Service, a Questionnaire Generation Service and a Metadata Dissemination Service. The other envisioned services were left outside of this list during the selection process.

Time Series Service

The Time series service is based on JDemetra+ and more precisely on a web service implementation of JDemetra+. This software package is developed and maintained by the National Bank of Belgium (NBB), thus a substantial part of the work done was to collaborate with NBB, particularly for preparing the reuse of the service.

A first round of discussion focused on the functional perimeter of the service. We agreed on a sufficiently large subset of JDemetra+ features :

X13 /Arima and Tramo-Seats seasonal adjustment algorithms

Benchmarking

Automatic modeling

In a second set of discussion we agreed on a schema describing inputs and outputs of the service, in link with the GSIM concepts and more generally with the need to use standardized interfaces in CSPA compliant services. This schema-based version of the service, developed during the CSPA 2014 project under the name Seasonal Adjustment Service, allowed a stricter control on the requests made to the service, and provided a better alignment on GSIM. During the discussions with the NBB, it was decided that the schema improvements made by Insee would be incorporated in the JDemetra+ web service that the NBB was developing on its side for the next version of the product. With this agreement, the Developer Organization role shifted in practice from Insee to the NBB.

The NBB started the development of this integration in M8 and the new version of the service was made available on GitHub at the beginning of M10. In the meantime, a comprehensible CSPA documentation of the feature set was made publicly available.


It is this version of the service that was used by Destatis in order to assess its capabilities. This assessment was both technically and business oriented. The technical part was quickly validated. Some questions were raised regarding the seasonal adjustment capability: more precisely, the subject-matter expert at Destatis asked whether it was possible to send custom X13 – Arima specifications to the service. In fact, it was already possible to do so, only the documentation was missing.

Destatis presented their two re-use cases (GDP and car market) and their target architecture during the Ljubljana meeting (3rd coordination meeting). In order to further prepare the integration of the service, a dedicated meeting was organized in Brussels between the NBB, Destatis, the Bundesbank and Insee, in order to precisely evaluate the use cases of Destatis (which were backed by test data sets) and to detail the road map.

The roadmap included an upgraded version of the TSS to be produced by the NBB, as well as internal organizational and technical measures to be implemented by Destatis. Version 2.2.0 of JDemetra+, including the upgraded service, was published at the end of March 2017. The re-use work in Destatis proved more complex than expected and took more time. In particular, it was necessary to exactly design and script the flows of information, which included the combination of input parameters provided by the Bundesbank and the time series themselves coming from various departments of Destatis. In the fourth coordination meeting in Vilnius, Destatis reported on the progress of this integration work, which was still going on.

It should be noted also that, in addition to Destatis, Eurostat showed some interest in the service and started installing and testing it internally in M11. These tests resulted in useful feeback, including bug reports, that helped improving the service.

Questionnaire Generation Service

The Questionnaire Generation Service was initially developed by Insee without specific considerations for its CSPA compliance or reusability by other NSIs. As a consequence, it was quite dependant on its technical environment and not at all internationalized. Furthermore, there was no particular license associated to the code, which was not published as open source. Thus, the following actions have been taken before offering the service for re-use.

First, the service was re-designed in order to make it more flexible, and environment- and language-independant. The following step was to provide both a functional and a technical documentation of the service. This was done in collaboration with a contractor, starting at the end of M7. Finally, the service and the documentation were open-sourced in M8.

A lot of development has been done since, including the internationalization of the code base which ended in M10 and the deep refactoring of the service which will be provided as as command line application on one side and as a RESTful service on the other side.

SURS successfully installed the command line service in M9. If the infrastructure-related part was easy, integrating existing metadata in the service was another challenge, despite the DDI modeling guide provided by Insee. We further addressed this subject during the Ljubljana meeting, concluding the need to standardize a DDI “profile” for representing questionnaires.

On this same subject, multiple communication meetings were conducted, most notably between SURS, CBS and Insee, in order to share experiences on the generation of questionnaire. A tri-lateral meeting took place in Lille (France) at the end of M13 to enrich this reflexion and agree on a common interoperability platform.

In M15, Insee DDI experts were sent on a mission to Ljubljana in order to help integrate the service in SURS architecture. SURS had already performed a system analysis for integrating ENO in production, and this served as a basis for the definition of a detailed road map. The integration of the service into the pre-production data collection platform at SURS represented an important milestone which took place in M18.

On the client side of the generation service, the questionnaire design application was further improved to meet the internal requirement at Insee; all those new features were made directly open-source. This application was largely demonstrated, including during the Ljubljana meeting. Insee decided to continue the open-sourcing of the design tool: in the following weeks, the persistence layer as well as the communication layer to the QGS were open sourced and made available on GitHub.

Metadata Dissemination Service

The service was initially developed within the framework of Insee’s RMéS project, which aims at a complete redesign of metadata repository and management process. The service in itself consists in functionalities of dissemination of RDF data (SPARQL querying, dereferencing of resources, REST API…), so it is model-agnostic and it can adapt to different types of metadata. This flexibility proved very useful during the course of the project.


The original thinking regarding the re-use of the MDS was that the ESSnet could focus on the dissemination and re-use of statistical concepts and classifications using Linked Open Data (LOD) standards and open APIs. The first candidate for the re-use of this kind of metadata was the ONS.

There was a first attempt at a CSPA service definition limited to classification dissemination by Statistics Norway in 2015. Hence, collaboration was initiated with Statistics Norway in order to exchange design and implementation decision. In particular, Statistics Norway was invited to the Lisbon meeting. In M11, both Norway and Insee services were presented to ONS.

Regarding the Insee service, as for the other two services, a particular effort was made to open-source the code. An internal task force was launched to work on the API specification, which was published in M10 and implemented in M11. The CSPA Service Implementation Description was also created.

We also benefit from the Implementing Modernstats Standards project from Unece: in M9, the client side of the service was developed, focused on classification dissemination part.

In M12, Insee and ONS exchanged views on the integration of the UK SIC classification in the service. To continue progress on that subject, ONS and Insee agreed on a bilateral meeting to be set up in the first quarter of 2017. Unfortunately, priorities changed in the ONS, and resource reassignments resulted in the Office not able to commit further on the re-use of the MDS.

We thus shifted to a different re-use case involving metadata on statistical operations and quality metadata, with the CASD (French Center for Secure Data Access) as a re-using organization. The CASD was managing its own list of statistical operations in order to document the secure files that it was offering to its users. The CASD thus saw a great interest in re-using the metadata on statistical operations provided by the QGS put in place by Insee. Firstly, it would allow an important reduction of the internal resources dedicated to the management of the information. Secondly, it would ensure a much greater coherence of the meta-information produced by Insee and the CASD, to the benefit of the users.

The re-using operation was kicked-off by two joint meetings in M12 and M13. It quickly appeared that most of the work would concern the alignment of the data models used by Insee and the CASD, and indeed this took several months and a number of meetings. The technical aspects were very simple in comparison: they were actually limited to writing the correct query to the service and integrating the results in the CASD information system, which was done very quickly.

The results of the model-alignment process were presented at the Vilnius coordination meeting in M18.

D3-2 Final report on the implementation of 3 statistical services (among which one is open source) M24

Nota bene: in the sake of brevity, only the developments that occurred after M18 are reported in this section, but the D3-2 deliverable contains the reporting on the entire lifespan of the project (i.e. it completely replaces and complements deliverable D3-1).

Time Series Service

During the last semester of the ESSnet, all the work on the TSS re-use operation was made by Destatis. It was first the continuation of the practical implementation of the new workflow, which included developing the calls to the service, scripting the succession of operations, documenting the process, etc. Then, once the service properly integrated in its re-use environment, it was possible to perform the full size tests. These tests showed that the service was performing well and that its technical integration was good. More time was spent on the methodological validation, in particular because it implied exchanges with Destatis methodologues and the Bundesbank. At the closing of the ESSnet, a last batch of tests remains to be realised, and Destatis expects to put the service in production in March 2018.


The developments on the QGS continued during the second half of 2017, and all the new features were directly added to the GitHub public repository, which had become in the meantime the central development platform used by Insee for this software and its companion tools.

The questionnaire design tool was also greatly improved over this period, with a new major version scheduled for the beginning of 2018 but already communicated to SURS as a beta version.

Finally, important efforts were made on the distribution of the QGS and of the tools supporting the whole questionnaire generation process. These tools have been packaged as a set of Docker image, and the whole can be installed by a one-line command. The collection of containers have been installed on a demo platform where the user can experience the


complete process of graphically designing the questionnaire, generating the collection instrument and install it on a web data collection platform.

On the re-use side, SURS took advantage of the ESSnet’s last months to consolidate the integration of the QGS in its collection infrastructure, to take in hand the questionnaire designer and to start the redesign of its metadata management and data collection platforms in order to achieve a better integration of the QGS.

Metadata Dissemination Service

Most of the activity linked to the re-use of the MDS by the CASD were concentrated on the first half of 2017, which resulted in an agreement on the detailed data model, including code and category lists. The second semester was dedicated mostly to reaching a complete consensus on the list of operations and their organization into series and families (or sources and programs). This is nearly achieved as of M24, so we expect that the re-use case will be put in production in the first months of 2018.

Results:

Work Package 3 fully met its objectives with the concrete demonstration of the re-use of three CSPA services. At the end of the project, all the re-use implementation are close to production status: the TSS is scheduled to go live in Destatis in March 2018; the QGS is in production at SURS for a simple questionnaire and included in a redesign of the datacollection platform that is planned for the first months of 2018; the MDS querying by the CASD is expected to by put in production in the spring.

It should be stressed that these results were obtained largely due to an excellent collaboration spirit among the partners, especially the re-using organizations and the National Bank of Belgium.

All the concrete experience gathered during these operation has been closely monitored by the whole consortium, and has fueled the deliverables produced by the other work packages, in particular the guidelines and good practice documents. It has also been regularly communicated to the Unece and the CSPA community at large.

Apart from this experience, more specific lessons learned can be mentioned as outcomes of the project.

The first is re-using a service is never just a technical operation, and we can even say that the technical aspects represent a small proportion of the work to be done. The service has to be integrated in existing processes and organizations, and that is the real challenge. We believe that every re-using operation should begin with an architecture study starting at the business level, and explicitely include aspects of process redesign and change management.

The second takeaway is that the use of standards helps a lot in re-using services, but the level of detail of even very precise standards like DDI is not enough for perfect interoperability at the implementation level. Thus, creating detailed application profiles for specific use cases is crucial. This activity could be included in the existing standardization procedures at the European or international level.

Finally, we learned also that the open-sourcing of services is a viable way to establish the confidence between the developing and re-using organisations (or with external partners). Open sourcing a software is very demanding, especially if it has not been done from the start, but it is also very rewarding in terms of code and documentation quality, which is in turn a great advantage for the re-usability.

Problems and corrective measures: none


WP4 : Identification of reusable services and analysis of requirements Partners : SURS (leader), Insee, ONS, SL, INE, Destatis, GENESThe objective of this WP -was to identify services which can be candidates for re-use in the ESS and to analyse the functional and technical requirements of a service for re-use in at least 3 ESS members.


M1M24

Title Identification of re-usable services and analysis of requirementsPartner 1

SURS2 INSEE

3INE

4ONS

5SL

6Destatis

7GENES

8 9 10 11 12 13 14

Objectives Identify reusable services and analyse related requirementsDescription of work1. Initial list of services that are candidates for re-use in ESS.

Statistical organizations already have a long history of sharing principles, values, standards, frameworks and statistical software. In the past, engagements between statistical organizations have been spontaneous, relationship driven with little way of obtaining an overview of what has taken place. Each statistical organization has developed their own local implementations, duplicating effort and augmenting their local portfolio of systems. A number of activities focusing on sharing and reuse of statistical services within statistical community have already been started. Within this activity work done in the UNECE CSPA project, ESS EA TF and ESS work on standardisation as well as work already done by other statistical organisations will be reviewed in order to set up an initial list of services that are candidates for re-use in ESS. It is important to clearly identify how each statistical organisation will benefit by reusing such statistical service. The analysis will address how "capability candidates" can be identified to be offered through service operations in an SOA environment. Initial cost/benefit analysis of re-use for each of those services will be performed. Due to the complexity of SOA, cost/benefit estimation for SOA-based software development and reuse is more difficult than that of traditional software development. Traditional software cost/benefit estimation approaches are inadequate to address the complex service-oriented systems. Therefore simple, understandable and easy to use tool for assessing statistical services’ costs/benefit will be developed. The tool will help in driving the statistical organization forward rather than acting purely as a classification framework. It will be based on ESS EA Reference Framework and CSPA standard. It will also take into account other industries SOA best practices, roadmaps and maturity models where appropriate. It will require the least work to get the best result and allow initial exclude/include decisions to be made early. It will present views and information in simple language. Both benefit and risk will be surfaced to aid decision making. It will consider current environment, ongoing projects and the transformation roadmaps. It will allow effective application at any point in a roadmap in any organizational situation. It will support varying levels of statistical service granularity. It will facilitate decision making. The tool will be consulted with other members of the consortium as well as with the members of the Task Force "shared SERVices" before distributed within statistical community in order to gather information for setting up initial list of shareable statistical services.

Subtasks:1. Analysis of work done in the UNECE CSPA project,ESS EA TF and ESS work on

standardisation as well as work already done by other statistical organisations2. Development of the tool for assessing statistical services’ costs/benefit3. Tool will be circulated within other members of the consortium as well as with the Members of

the Task Force "shared SERVices" before distributed within statistical community4. Data collection and analysis of results5. Setting up initial list of shareable statistical services

2. Analysis of functional and technical requirements of 1 selected service candidate in more (at least 3) ESS Members. The document shall contain a complete list of requirements with their priorities and


evaluate the similarities and differences of requirements among the ESS Members.

The theoretical framework from the first task of the WP4 will be practically implemented for the case of one selected statistical service. In the initial phase few ‘candidate services’ will be listed and then the most suitable statistical service will be selected through the discussion with the consortium as well as with the members of the Task Force "shared SERVices". The confirmation of Eurostat of appropriateness of the selected service will also be searched. At the same time the ESS members that will agree to test the technical requirements of the selected service will be determined. The main criterion for the selection of the service will be its wide usage across the statistical organisations, as well as existence of the firm theoretical framework for its theoretical, methodological description.The analyses of functional and technical requirements of the selected statistical service will have to be performed on the basis of the mutually agreed methodology. The main principle should be that the analyses will strongly be based on the practical experiences of statistical organisations. In the process of setting up the harmonised methodology the already available methodological documents will be studied and the results of already performed projects and studies will be taken into account. Subtasks:

Selection of few candidates for selected statistical service Selection process of one selected service (agreement of consortium, TF "shared SERVices" and

Eurostat) Selection of 3 ESS members to participate in analyses process Coordination of analyses in 3 ESS members Collection of the outputs of analyses Preparation of the summary document and final report

Deliverables D4-1 Initial list of services that are candidates for re-use in ESS M12 D4-2 Analysis of functional and technical requirements of 1 selected service candidate in

more (at least 3) ESS Members M24

D4-1 Initial list of services that are candidates for re-use in ESS (M12) The objective of WP4 - Identification of re-usable services and analysis of requirements was to identify services that can be candidates for re-use in the ESS. The two main questions considered in order to successfully carry out activity D4-1 were: What is the most appropriate level for the service definition (service granularity) in the list of services that are candidates for re-use in the ESS in order to reach a sufficient understanding of various experts (statisticians, IT, archi -tects and management)? How to assess the costs and benefits of reusing each candidate service within each NSI and across the ESS ?

Initial list of services that are candidates for re-use in the ESSWithin the activity work done in the UNECE CSPA project, the ESS EA TF and other work done in the field of statistical modernisation as well as work done by other statistical organisations and expert groups was reviewed in order to set up the first list of services that are candidates for re-use in the ESS. As regards modernisation standards, the following documents and frameworks were studied: ESS EA reference framework, ESS SPRA, CSPA, GSIM, GSBPM, ESS EA Capability Model, UNECE Investment plan, and OSSIM reference model. As regards existing lists of potential services to be shared and reused within the statistical organisation, the following were identified and taken into account: ESS Shared Services TF list, ESS SPRA, CSPA-compliant services developed and under preparation, and CSPA Canberra sprint list of candidate services. The analysis on identifying and defining potential candidate services to be shared was carried out by considering the three main dimensions: GSBPM phases and sub-processes, service granularity, and benefits of service re-use. In the first phase SURS’s experts from different areas (subject-matter statisticians, general methodologists, IT specialists) were included. It was necessary to align the understanding of the term of service. SURS experts are acquainted with three levels of service definitions (conceptual, logical and physical). It was agreed to prepare a list of services on a conceptual level. Work was carried out in small teams. Each team member was first acquainted with current modernisation standards and the general framework. Based on the analysis of a particular business area according to each GSBPM phase potential service candidates were identified and reported to the main project team for further consideration and revision.


Work was performed also in cooperation with the ONS and Destatis. Two online meetings were organised. During the first web meeting the ONS presented to SURS and Destatis their architecture practice and related architecture artefacts: ONS - EA - Business Function Hierarchy ONS - EA - Business Service Model ONS - EA DTM Platform Models

The main goals of this web meeting were: To discuss the level of granularity where the services should be defined To discuss the information needed to describe the service

During the second online meeting the ONS and SURS discussed the following topics: What is the most appropriate level of granularity for sharing? What services should the ESS develop ? ESS service evaluation criteria How to define a CSPA service ? What is a good CSPA service ? Service need to have input and outputBased on a) internal SURS’s practice for developing reusable statistical software, b) taking into account experiences and guidelines learned from the “How to define a CSPA statistical service” exercise that was executed by the ONS and INE during the Paris kick-off meeting and c) ONS architecture practice, the first list of services that are candidates for re-use in the ESS was established. Given the experiences gained from the analysis, service candidates were defined a) At the GSBPM sub-process level b) One level below, represented as business function (for example validation rules, imputation methods) According to the analysis these two levels should be the best choice in order to reach understanding of various experts (statisticians, IT, architects) that should participate in identifying candidate statistical services to be reused. When developing candidate statistical services, more precise granularity for each statistical service could be taken into account.Each service from the first list of services was linked to the GSBPM phases and sub-processes and also to the ESS Business Capability Model. Basic description for each service in the first list of candidate services was developed by taking into account the CSPA Statistical Service Definition template. The list was presented at the Lisbon meeting and published into the SCFE cloud for comments. In the next step the ONS and SURS worked in close cooperation and pairing the candidate services list with work carried out in the scope of WP1: Description of service granularity Guidance for Sharing Common Functionalities in the European Statistical Service SCFE Guide to sharing services

The list of candidate services was presented at the SERV TF meeting in M10.The first attempt to identify the most significant candidate services from the list of candidate services was carried out by developing a pilot web survey for identifying 10 most significant services and for identifying potential additional candidate services not present in the current list of candidate services. The pilot questionnaire was distributed to the SCFE partners. Based on the analysis of responses, the list of 22 candidate services was discussed at the Ljubljana meeting’s interactive mini sprint for candidate services prioritisation using the cost/benefit approach.

Initial cost/benefit analysis of re-use for each of those servicesIn parallel with the creation of the initial list of candidate services, work on developing the cost/benefit methodology was carried out. Eurostat requested in the ESSNet on "Sharing common functionalities in ESS" 1st request for clarification to confirm that WP4 will deliver a methodology (e.g. a workflow with instruction) for the cost/benefit analysis. Additionally, it was decided by the TF on SERV that the cost/benefit analysis should be derived from attractiveness, achievability and affordability of service re-use. Due to the complexity of identifying each candidate services’ attractiveness, achievability and affordability within each NSI and across the ESS, the assessment framework for analysing each statistical service’s cost/benefit was developed. This framework was used as the basis of a web questionnaire that was distributed within the ESS and EFTA in order to identify the most wanted reusable statistical services to be developed in the next SERV project phase. The assessment framework’s ideas and main purposes were presented at the kick-off meeting in Paris.


At the beginning several brainstorming meetings were held at SURS in order to define cost/benefit criteria and sub-criteria derived from attractiveness, achievability and affordability and their descriptions. Different criteria considered were divided into two groups: Criteria for selecting the most significant candidate services (for example Improves quality & efficiency, Stra -tegic impact & contribution to strategic objectives, Stakeholder commitment to the changes), based on service definition description Criteria for assessing candidate service at specification/implementation level (for example Software usability, Software quality), based on service specification or implementation description

Initial candidate services cost/benefit analysis using the assessment framework was performed at SURS taking into account service definition description of four statistical services developed within the ESSNet SCFE project. The cost/benefit assessment framework and its first testing were presented at the Lisbon coordination meeting. The assessment framework is open and can be adapted by taking into consideration different criteria and sub-criteria for different situations. In the discussion the partners agreed that the assessment of services should not only be at the definition level but at the implementation level as well. For that purpose an additional criteria model was developed taking into account specification and implementation level cost/benefit criteria and presented at the Ljubljana meeting.

Finalisation of the productsBased on the analysis of responses to the pilot survey on identifying 10 most significant services the list of 22 candidate services was considered at the Ljubljana meeting’s interactive mini sprint on candidate services selection. The goal of the mini sprint was to test the pilot questionnaire which was planned to be distributed within the ESS for the same purpose. For that an interactive pilot questionnaire was developed, which enabled quick analysis of the responses. The main conclusion from the discussion was that the proposed pilot questionnaire is too complicated and not suitable for the distribution within the ESS. The pilot questionnaire should be simplified by using fewer cost/benefit criteria. It was also concluded that the complete list of 32 candidate services should be considered in the analysis. The final assessment was therefore more strategic, and focused on the business needs of the ESS countries. The outcome of this assessment is a prioritised list of most attractive statistical services that can then be developed. (As described in WP1 deliverable D1-1, Chapter 2.6.) Statistical services can be available as generic solutions either by replication of solutions in the national statistical production process or by exposing these as statistical services on the ESS SOA platform(s).At the end of February and March 2017 the survey for identifying the initial list of the services in the ESS was launched. The link to the electronic survey questionnaire was sent to the National Statistical Institutes (hereinafter NSI). The survey’s main purpose was to identify re-usable services that could be useful for the production process in NSIs. The questionnaire encompassed the questions on attractiveness, achievability and affordability of the selected list of 32 services. All communication was performed electronically. Reporting units were ITDG members: EU member states, EFTA members, candidates and potential candidates for EU membership. Two reminders were sent. The deadline of the survey was 15 March 2017. The questionnaire was still available for the respondents until 24 March 2017. Of the 38 countries included in the survey 71% responded. Among the 27 respondents 15 were IT directors, 4 IT experts, 3 directors of methodology and 5 others. The responses from IT directors and IT staff were summed up and compared to the answers from other types of respondents. From both groups we selected the top 10 selected services. The analysis shows that between different divisions in the NSI there are differences regarding which service is the best choice.The results of the survey revealed that there is interest in services for disclosure control, record linking, SDMX coding and transform, microdata access (confidentiality on the fly) and content data validation. Most of the services were on the list. Some countries listed their solutions that could be shared. The difference between evaluations by the AAA framework shows that respondents are somehow reserved on affordability of the services. The results also suggest that there are differences in opinion between different divisions within the same NSI that would need to be addressed in the future.In the workshop, organized from 6th to 7th July 2018 in Wiesbaden, the results of the WP4 were presented. The participants, including representatives of the ESS member states, UNECE, EFTA and Eurostat, agreed with the presented initial list of services and cost benefit methodology. They confirmed that the results are valuable for the ESS and supported further work on the topics of the project. Results: Initial list of services that are candidates for re-use.

Deviation : the initial cost/benefit analysis of re-use for each of those services has been performed in the second year of project execution due to the challenges related to the distribution of the questionnaire on identifying the most significant services within each NSI. During the discussion at the Ljubljana meeting it was proposed to first announce the related survey at the forthcoming ITDG/DIME meeting before distributing it.


Problems and corrective measures : none

D4-2 Analysis of functional and technical requirements of 1 selected service candidate in more (at least 3) ESS Members M24

The objective of WP4 - Identification of re-usable services and analysis of requirements was to identify services that can be candidates for re-use in the ESS and to analyse the functional and technical requirements of one service for re-use in at least 3 ESS members. The document contains a complete list of requirements taking into account similarities and differences of requirements among the 3 ESS members.

The theoretical framework from the first task of the WP4 has been practically implemented for the case of selected statistical service GRAPHAN - Graphical data analysis service. The aim of this service is to provide a tool for graphical representation of the data, enabling statisticians a detailed insight into the data distribution, leading to detection of its deviations and suspicious values or patterns. This procedure is mainly intended for detecting irregularities on the macro level; therefore, we can classify it into the so-called macro editing part of the process. With this tool the suspicious and potentially erroneous values are only detected. Other tools should be used for data correction.

On the general level the service should provide two basic types of analyses: cross-sectional and longitudinal. The cross-sectional analysis explores the data of only one survey instance, mostly exploring the univariate or multivariate data distribution. On the other hand, the data set that is explored with the longitudinal analysis consists of the data from several survey instances. This analysis hence focuses on the longitudinal aspect of the data distribution, aiming at detecting the irregularities in the temporal data distribution.

The main criterion for selecting the service was its potential for wide usage across the statistical domains and organisations, as well as the existence of the firm theoretical framework for its theoretical, methodological description. The selection of the service was discussed and agreed by ESSNet partners, TF SERV and Eurostat.

Functional and technical requirements of the selected statistical service were analysed on the basis of the mutually agreed methodology. The main principle was that the analyses should be based on the practical experiences of statistical organisations. In the process of setting up the harmonised methodology the already available methodological documents were studied and the results of already performed projects and studies were taken into account.

The Netherlands (CBS), Hungary (HCSO) and Croatia (Croatian Bureau of Statistics) participate in the process of analysing functional and technical requirements. Proposals and comments were taken into consideration in the final document.

The purpose was to give a detailed description of the requirements for the graphical data analysis service and to illustrate the purpose and complete declaration for the development of the graphical data analyses system. It also explains system constraints, interface and potential interactions with other external services. This document is primarily intended to be proposed to statistical institutions for review and coordination of requirements and as a reference for developing the first version of the system for the development team. It includes the pseudo code for developing service methods and REST Api specification for developing REST service.

Results: Analysis of functional and technical requirements of statistical service GRAPHAN - Graphical data analysis service.Problems and corrective measures: none


WP5 : Fostering Open Source solutions Partners : INE(leader), Insee ONS, SL, SURS, INE, Destatis, GENES The main purpose for this WP was to provide information and tools regarding the state-of-art of open source solutions, that were available or planned, that could be used to better help and foster statistical production. This should enable any statistical organization to replicate, integrate and collaborate on the identified open source solutions, and in the future contribute with more open source solutions in a technical standard way.


M1M24

Title Fostering open source solutionsPartner 1 INE 2

INSEE

3SURS

4ONS

5SL

6Destatis

7GENES

8 9 10 11 12 13 14

Objectives:The main purpose for this WP, is to provide information and tools regarding the state-of-art of open source solutions, that are available or planned, that can be used to better help and foster statistical production. This should enable any of our statistical organization to replicate, integrate and collaborate on the identified open source solutions, and in the future contribute with more open source solutions in a technical standard way.The best and most desirable outcome that could come from this work, would be the birth of a community, like many that exist in the open source world. Where everyone collaborates with their (limited) resources on a common goal, a common project.This would also help to standardize the tools, the process and outcomes of the statistical organizations.Description of workFor this WP it is advisable to get in touch and synchronize with the past and present work in other projects promoted by:

Eurostat, like ESSnet CORA; EC iniatives, like ISA, Joinup; Government National initiatives; NSI initiatives; UNECE initiatives; DDI community initiatives.

For D5-1, we will perform a consultation, by interviews and web questionnaires.For D5-2, D5-3 and D5-4, we will seek for the best practices on assessing and benchmarking software solutions, we will test it and adapt to better fit the needs of the project. For this, we will also try to get the collaboration of other NSI's. And this way try to build the desired community of open source solutions.Subtasks:

Build a contact list of the key IT players that we can use for lobbying to work and collaborate on the project.

Build a web questionnaire and direct contacts (phone, videoconferences and meetings) for D5-1. Define the technical criterias and weights that will be used on D5-2. Test the technical criterias and weights on the forseen D5-, make adjustments, and feedback it to D5-

2.


Deliverables

D5-1 Report: Documentation of current and planned open source solutions and projects for statistical production in the ESS - M12

D5-2, Report: Criteria for assessing/benchmarking such solutions and projects for statistical production - M15

D5-3, Report: Assessing open source software solutions for statistical production and for their capability to become available in the ESS as a CSPA compliant statistical service. Applications of open source solutions in different steps of the production process might involve all aspects of survey methodology, starting from drawing complex sampling designs, editing and imputation, calibration, point and variance estimation, indicator methodology, issues with large data sets, high performance computing and visualisation. This deliverable will also give hints on software components needed to implement an opensource web services platform - M18

D5-4, Report: Guidelines and recommendations for development of training materials and for open source solutions and projects - M24

D5-1 Report: Documentation of current and planned open source solutions and projects for statistical production in the ESS – M12

The first version of this deliverable was presented during the Ljubljana meeting in M12, were it was considered incomplete. It was then decided to do a new and improved survey and report. Due to this setback, all of the following deliverables had to be re-scheduled, except for the final D5-4 (M24). We did a new survey and a new report based on the findings and analysis, which was delivered a final version in M15.

One of the biggest challenges in this deliverable was the process of obtaining and building the contact list of the managers, directors and IT specialists of the NSIs in the ESS.

The invitation to participate in the survey was sent on the 14th of February of 2017. Two reminders were sent to those who still had not answered the survey. The first reminder was send on the 21st of February of 2017 and the second one on the 27th of February of 2017. Follow up emails were sent to some of colleagues of the ESSnet SCFE in order to try to increase the number of responses.

Through the survey we aimed to gain a better understanding of the NSIs current practices relating to OSS solutions, identify their needs, and explore a possible sharing of common tools and OSS solutions within the ESS. For the purpose of analysis, we have have divided the analysis in two parts. One general part regarding the use of OSS, policies and regulations, and a second part specific tostatistical products.

In this deliverable we have concluded that :

The majority of NSIs conduct research/benchmark/comparative studies to include opensource products when evaluating solutions for statistical products. These studies are mainly economic and financial studies. Although these studies are performed, no NSI declares to have an opensource strategy. This could represent an opportunity to start an opensource community in the ESS.

A large number of NSIs are interested in being community contributors and active supporters of the community.

Although all NSIs are familiar with "CSPA Application Architecture", only one potentially reusable/shareable statistical product is already "aligned with CSPA Application Architecture".

Historically, little relevance has been given to "development interaction" and "license type" when choosing statistical products, since only one statistical product has open/community development interaction, and half of the statistical products have proprietary license type. This finding can be possibly explained by the fact that NSIs do not have a well-defined open source policy. The same is true when considering support since the majority of the reported statistical products only have "Best effort support" and none has "Community based support".

With exception of DEMETRA+ and SDMX Framework, the remaining statistical products only have a minor usage.


D5-2, Report: Criteria for assessing/benchmarking such solutions and projects for statistical production – M15

Due to problems already mentioned in the above D5-1 report, this deliverable was re-scheduled for M19 and delivered in M19.

For this deliverable and in alignment with the task force on VIP.SERV ESSnet we developed and used a Cost-benefit analysis (CBA), based on a triple A model (AAA - Attractiveness, Achievability and Affordability). This was done by converting the WP5-1 survey questions into criteria and sub-criteria, testing and adjusting weights that could deliver the best tool for evaluation purposes. The CBA analysis was done with the “supply side” in mind.

In this deliverable we concluded that :

Choosing metrics requires considerable thought and care to support specific business goals.

A prior analysis, aligned with the context of “Sharing Common Functionalities in the ESS”, must be done in order to define the weight/rating/grades for Attractiveness, Achievability, and Affordability method.

Although some aspects of software development, applied to statistical products, are measurable, some kind of subjectivity is always present.

It was possible to define criteria for assessing/benchmarking Open Source Solutions (OSS) and projects for statistical production in the European Statistical System (ESS).

D5-3, Report: Assessing open source software solutions for statistical production and for their capability to become available in the ESS as a CSPA compliant statistical service – M18

Due to problems already mentioned in the above D5-1 report, this deliverable was re-scheduled for M21 and delivered in M21.

All information collected on D5-1 and D5-2 enabled us to provide in D5-3 hints and guidelines on how to implement, or improve, an open source web service platform for statistical production.

The existence of a web service is one of the recommendations of the “CSPA Application Architecture”, and a missing key feature of half of the statistical products reported in D5-1. Therefore, it is very important to take action in order to implement, or improve, an open source web service platform for statistical production. One potential limitation in the implementation of the required web services for statistical production, components is the fact that NSIs mentioned that they are not sure about the “estimated cost of implementing non existing features” for the majority of Statistical products.

Taking in account the goal of developing an open source web service platform statistical community and avoid common pitfalls, namely the lack of interoperability, a well-planned web service project should follow specific guidelines and phases, as expressed in the report.

D5-4, Report: Guidelines and recommendations for development of training materials and for open source solutions and projects - M24

This deliverable was delivered on time in M24.

In this deliverable we provided guidelines and recommendations about “Open Source solutions and projects” as well about the “Development of training materials”.

We stated that:

Open source is not a business model for earning money. Trust and mutual benefits are essential prerequisites. Working on this baseline is not new for statistical organizations around the world. We hope we have shown how FOSS can be a template for collaboration in CSPA/SERV.

“Sponsoring” by more advanced or capable organizations is welcomed.

Organizations can share and re-use software, but they can also share and re-use training materials. However, in the absence of suitable training materials, organizations need to create them from scratch. Special care should be taken when developing those materials.

INE also provided and maintained a collaborative workspace consisting of owncloud (https://owncloud.com/) and dokuwiki (https://www.dokuwiki.org) during the ESSNet.


https://www.dokuwiki.org/

https://owncloud.com/

WP6 : Management & dissemination Partners: Insee (leader), ONS, SL, SURS, INE, Destatis, GENESThe objective of this WP was to make sure that the project meets expectations in terms of outputs and ensured that these outputs would be used in the longer term. Meetings, telephone conferences were organised where the ongoing tasks, deliverables for project meetings and open questions were discussed between the project members. To make sure that the project was going in the right direction, a mini-sprint was organised with experts outside the consortium back to back with every coordination meeting. This helped save both time & money but above all ensures that this project could benefit to a larger group than the entities which were part of the project team.

Task/Work package number

6 Start Month: End Month:

M1M24

Title Management & Dissemination

Partner 1 INSEE

2 INE

3

ONS

4SL

5Destatis

6GENES

7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

Objectives: Overall project management, coordination, reporting to Eurostat and dissemination towards stakeholders.Description of work

The project is carried out by 6 NSIs where each Work Package leader will be responsible for its own Work Package and its deliverables. Therefore the aim of this WP is twofold: making sure that the project meets its expectations in terms of outputs and ensuring that these outputs will be used in the longer term. During this 2-year project, meetings, telephone conferences will be organised where the ongoing tasks, deliverables for project meetings and open questions will be discussed between the project members.

To make sure that the project is going in the right direction, a mini-sprint will be organised with experts outside the consortium back to back with every coordination meeting. This will save both time & money but above all will ensure that this project can benefit to a larger group than the entities which are part of the proejct team.

Finally, a workshop will be organised by the end of the project in order to present the outcomes of the different workpackages. The project team will invite experts and interested parties to this event.

Some ESS bodies (NSI and ONA) have already expressed their interest in taking part to the mini-sprint meetings and the workshop.

Subtasks:

Task 6-1: Management of the consortium

Monitoring status of tasks, work packages and deliverables;

Ensuring the quality and timeliness of the deliverables;

Identification of problems, ways to overcome problems and managing risks;

Gathering all administrative and budgetary documents to produce the final report.

Task 6-2: Dissemination towards stakeholders Ensuring that a wide audience is made aware of the project”s work by disseminating reports and deliverables. This can be achieved by using Cros-portal as a means for dissemination or by using project members’ participation to various task forces and working groups as a way to promote the work of the ESSnet. In order to promote the work of the ESSnet beyond the borders of the ESS, the partners will organise a meeting with the NSIs of Norway and Switzerland. Both these countries are active in the development of reusable tools and therefore a study-visit in each country will benefit the project from a dissemination perspective but but also to learn from them. In the same perspective, mini-sprint meetings will be organised back to back with each coordination meeting: a limited number of experts will be invited to brainstorm on the project's outcomes. Finally, a workshop will be organised by the end of the project (M18 at the earliest): this workshop will contribute to present the


project's outcomes and to gather a wider audience.

Planned location of meetings: Kick-off meeting: France 2nd coordination meeting: Slovenia 3rd coordination meeting: Portugal 4th coordination meeting: Lithuania Project workshop: Germany Final meeting: United Kingdom

Deliverables D6-1: minutes of the kick-off meeting (M1) D6-2 : minutes of 2nd coordination meeting (M6) D6-3 : minutes of 3rd coordination meeting (M12) D6-4 : interim report (M13) D6-5 : minutes of 4th coordination meeting and workshop (M18) D6-6 : minutes of the final coordination meeting (M24)

Quarterly monitoringEurostat will receive a quarterly report, report based mainly on a chart summarizing the sub-tasks of each Work Package, their expected end dates and rates of progress.

D6-1: minutes of the kick-off meeting (M1) Kick -off meeting in Paris : 3th and 4 th of February 2016 https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/cros/content/scfe-d6-1-minutes-kick-meeting-paris_en

D6-2 : minutes of 2nd coordination meeting (M6) Coordination meeting I Lisbon : 6 th and 7 th of July 2016 https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/cros/content/scfe-d6-2-minutes-second-coordination-meeting-lisbon_en

D6-3 : minutes of 3rd coordination meeting (M12)Coordination meeting in Ljubljana : 6th and 8th of December 2016https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/cros/content/scfe-d6-3-minutes-third-coordination-meeting-ljubljana_en

D6-4 : interim report (M13)https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/cros/content/scfe-d6-4-intermediary-report_en

D6-5 : minutes of 4th coordination meeting and workshop (M18) Coordination meeting in Vilnius : 19th and 20th of June 2017https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/cros/content/scfe-d6-5-minutes-fourth-coordination-meeting-vilnius-and-wiesbaden-workshop_en

Workshop in Wiesbaden : 6th and 7th of July 2017https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/cros/content/scfe-d6-5-minutes-fourth-coordination-meeting-vilnius-and-wiesbaden-workshop_en

D6-6 : minutes of the final coordination meeting (M24)Final meeting in Newport : 30 th tof November to 1 st of December https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/cros/content/scfe-d6-6-minutes-final-coordination-meeting-newport_en


https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/cros/content/scfe-d6-5-minutes-fourth-coordination-meeting-vilnius-and-wiesbaden-workshop_en




Table 1 : Deliverables

Deliverable nameLead beneficiary

Delivery date (from Grant agreement)

DeliveredYes/No

Delivery date

Comments

WP1 : D1-1 : Draft guidelines for the identification, development, sharing and implementing statistical services in local information system arhitecture and on an ESS SOA platform

M9 Yes M11

WP1 : D1-2 : Draft report : templates for describing statistical services in conceptual, logical and physical levels

M9 Yes M22

WP1 : D1-3 : Draft report : “Hands on” How to expose a statistical service on an ESS SOA platform and how to integrate a service exposed on an ESS SOA platform in a local business processes

M9 Yes M12

WP1 : D1-4 : Final versions of D1-1, D1-2 &D1-3 M12 Yes M22

WP1 : D1-4bis : Possible updated version of D1-4 M24 M24 D1-1 updated, D1-2 published, D1-3 extended

WP2 : D2-1 : First version of the description of the Centre of Excellence

M12 Yes M12

WP2 : D2-1bis : Possible updated version of D2-1 M12 Yes M24

WP3 : D3-1 : Interim report on the implementationof 3 statistical services

M18

WP3 : D3-2 : Final report on the implementation of 3 statistical services

M24

WP4 : D4-1 : Initial list of services that are candidates for re-use in ESS

M12 Yes M12

WP4 : D4-2 : Analysis of functional and technical requirements of 1 selected service candidate in more ESS members

M24 Yes M24

WP5 : D5-1 : Report : documentation of current and planned open sources solutions and projects for statistical production in the ESS

M12 Yes M12

WP5 : D5-2 : Report : criteria for assessing/benchmarking such solutions and projects for statistical production

M15 Yes M19

WP5 : D5-3 : Report assessing open source software solutions for statistical production and their capability to become available in the ESS as a CSPA compliant statistical service. Applications of open source solutions in different steps of the production process might involve all aspects of survey methodology, starting from drawing complex, sampling designs, editing and imputation, calibration, point and variance estimation, indicator methodology, issues with large data sets, high performance computing and visualisation. This deliverable will also give hints on software components needed to implent an open source web services platform.

M18 Yes M21

WP5 : D5-4 : Report : guidelines and recommendations for development of training materials and for open source solutions and projects.

M24 Yes M24

WP6 : D6-1 : Minutes of the kick- off meeting M1 Yes M2

WP6 : D6-2 : Minutes of 2nd coordination meeting M6 Yes M7

WP6 : D6-3 : Minutes of 3rd coordination meeting M12 Yes M13

WP6 : D6-4 : Interim report M13 Yes M15

WP6 : D6-5 : Minutes of the 4th coordination meeting and workshop

M18 Yes M19

WP6 : D6-6 : Minutes of the final coordination meeting M24 Yes M24

Project management

The first half of the project lay the foundation for the final phase (M13 to M24) where the project partners were expected to deliver outputs which should be concrete enough: to increase awareness about how to use and be part of an ESS service oriented organisation; to deliver the necessary “hands on” for NSIs and ONAs for starting to engage in implementing Service Oriented Architecture and to share solutions with other bodies in the ESS.

Due to the need for improved cooperation between partners and for a comprehensive contact list of the relevant respondents before launching a survey to NSIs outside the consortium, the schedule of WP5 deliverables was adapted. Finally these changes allowed to disseminate all deliverables before the end of the project.

The table below summarizes the coordination meetings and mini-sprints organised so far and shows that the consortium regularly met and benefited from the input of external experts:

Coordination meeting

Date Place Workshop theme Invited experts

Kick-off meeting M2 Paris (France) How to make a service CSPA compliant?

- Villu Lõhmus (Statistics Estonia)- Martin Netolicky (CZSO)- Steven Vale (UNECE)

#2 M7 Lisboa (Portugal)

Time Series Service - Trygve Falch (Statistics Norway)- Villu Lõhmus (Statistics Estonia)- Jean Palate (Bank of Belgium)

#3 M12 Ljubljana (Slovenia)


- Matjaž Jug (CBS)- Villu Lõhmus (Statistics Estonia)- Mauro Bruno (Istat)- Steven Vale (UNECE)

#4 M18 Vilnius(Lithuania)

Decision and preparation the final activities of the ESSnetPreparation of the Wiesbaden workshop

Workshop M18 Wiesbaden(Germany)

Outcomes of WPs

#5 M24 Newport(UK)

Final results, future - Csaba Beres (Hungarian Central Statistical Office)- Ivan Salomone (NSO)- Therese Lalor (UNECE)

In between these coordination meetings, the project partners used different collaborative tools in order to work in cooperation: three webex meetings were held (in M4, M10 and M21); a cloud platform was dedicated to the project (with limited access to project partners): https://cloud.ine.pt/ ; a wiki (also limited to project partners) was put in place for monthly reports (where WP leaders describe the activities carried out every month) and drafting agendas and conclusions of meetings: https://scfewiki.ine.pt/doku.php .

Finally project partners could rely on the Eurostat project manager to help in overcoming issues (such as lack of cooperation or the absence of consensus on strategic matters) if they arose.

https://scfewiki.ine.pt/doku.php

https://cloud.ine.pt/

Dissemination action towards the ESS

Most of the dissemination activities were being taken charge of by the coordination team (ie Insee). However, and due to the many relationships between consortium partners and other ESS governance groups, some other partners had been able to take an active part in these activities. The project team aimed at providing quality and timely information to both the other statistical institutes and authorities but also to governance bodies within and outside the ESS.The table below summarizes the various dissemination activities undertaken by the project members (the various items are filled in only when applicable/relevant):In addition, experts outside the consortium were regularly invited to attend coordination meetings and internal workshops. They provided valuable input to the project but their participation was also a means to inform other ESS entities on the progress made in the scope of our project. So far, experts from the NSI of the Czech Republic, Estonia, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Malta and Hungary attended SCFE meetings.

Forum Content Audience Place Date Projetct partner

ESS modernisation workshop

General presentation of the project

ESS NSIs Bucharest February 2016 Insee

CSPA Implementation Group

Report on the work of the ESSnet

CSPA Community March 2016 Inee

IT Working Group Report on the work of the ESSNet

NSIs members of the ITWG

Luxemburg May 2016 Insee

Joint UNECE/Eurostat workshop

Report on the work of the ESSnet

NSIs and ONAs within and beyond the ESS

Geneva June 2016 Insee

NTTS Prposal for a paper on how SCFE relates to discussion held within the CSPA community

International (official statisticians and researchers)

August 2016 Destatis

Seasonal Adjustment Days

Presentation of the Time series webservice

International (practionners of seasonal adjustment)

Paris October 2016 Insee

EABoard Regular liaising EA Board members ONS

HLG on the Modernisation of Official Statistics

Presentation of the classification dissemination service and webclient

HLG MOS members Geneva November 2016 Insee

UNECE CSPA Workshop

Progress of SCFE – various presentations

International Wiesbaden July 2017 All

ESS SCFE Workshop

Progress of SCFE – various presentations

ESS Members Wiesbaden July 2017 All

HLG MOS Questionnaire Generation Service presentation

HLG MOS members Geneva 23th of November 2017

Insee

European DDI conference

Questionnaire Generation Service ad Metadata Dissemination Service presentation

International Lausanne 6th of December 2017

Insee

Finally, a communication package including a logo was chosen for the project. This visual tool will help identifying SCFE related activities and promoting the activities of the consortium.

As Statistics Lithuania was unable to subcontract activities necessary for the successful completion of the works,it was agreed with Eurostat and the consortium to transfer their budget (45 000 €)

9 000 € on the one hand to the INSEE, the overall budget foreseen for the participation of the INSEE amounted to 324 207,60 € after this transfer

36 000 € on the other hand to finance the works executed by GENES, the overall budget for the participation of GENES amounted to 109 814,55 €.

Annex I has been amended to that effect and Annex II (estimated budget), the maximum amount of the grant remains unchanged. This amendment shall form an integral part of the Agreement.

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