Impact

The use of the SDMX standard has greatly accelerated the process of publishing statistical data provided by Member States. Where this process was previously hindered by the use of diverging standards, SDMX allows for a much quicker publication, since Eurostat no longer has to invest time in converting the data of the Member States from various formats into its own mode of display.

In addition, the use of a common standard amongst various international institutions is very beneficial. It makes significant savings possible, as it becomes very easy for an organisation using the standard to use data which has already been gathered elsewhere for its own purposes, with minimal effort. The data is collected only once, and then shared between the various organisations, which reduces the amount of funding needed for collecting data. The process of sharing is not only enabled, but also accelerated by the use of SDMX as a common standard

Track record of sharing

SDMX is an initiative that is sponsored by the Bank of International Settlements (BIS), the European Central Bank (ECB), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the United Nations (UN), the World Bank and Eurostat. The cooperation between these organisations originated before the SODI project, as they were had already been exchanging data and expertise. The common initiative came into existence after a series of executive meetings, which were further prepared in technical staff meetings in Paris, Maqua explains. Eurostat is the main beneficiary of the greater interoperability provided by the SDMX initiative, “because in contrast to the other institutions we receive data and pass it on, which is basically only the case with the ECB although it has a much narrower target area”, explains Leonhard Maqua from the Eurostat team. Nonetheless, the initiative also brings many benefits to the other institutions as well. As Maqua says, “we do something, they do something, and afterwards we can all use it together, because SDMX is a common standard”.

In the case of the SDMX converter, Eurostat was in charge of the development of the tool. It contracted a consortium of firms, which developed the converter in close cooperation with the Eurostat team. For testing purposes, the team worked closely together with the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) in order to test the software thoroughly and in areas where Eurostat could not have put the program through its paces by itself. 

Another example can be seen in the European Central Bank's Statistics Dashboard tool, which visualises statistical data in a way that is very clear and easily understandable. Although this tool was not developed by Eurostat, it will intensive use at Eurostat. This in turn will help in further improving the software. Cross-institutional developments are thus not considered an obstacle for the initiative, but rather help all participating institutions in some form or another.

Beyond the group of sponsoring organisations, the United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organisation has also started using the standard, which was a rather positive surprise to the Eurostat team.

Lessons learnt

For the success of the X-DIS program and the SDMX initiative, careful planning was one of the most important ingredients. Maqua highlights that “we invested one and a half work years into the planning phase of the project”, which enabled the project team to give clear predictions of the requirements for such a program. 

With basically no advertisement and only with the help of the Open Source community and the widespread use across all sponsoring institutions has the SDMX standard achieved relatively large popularity. The standard is increasingly used by other - non-sponsoring- institutions and the private sector.