The Government approved the statistical actions for the next five years

“The statistical programme is based on user needs,” said Mr Andres Oopkaup, Director General of Statistics Estonia. “In compiling the statistical programme, user needs are voiced by the representatives of public interest – mainly by ministries and professional associations,” explained Mr Oopkaup. He added that the representatives of public interest see to it that there would be high-quality official statistics available in their field, as it is necessary for improving life in Estonia and making decisions at the state level.

In conducting statistical actions, Statistics Estonia uses mainly data collected in state and local government databases if, based on these data, it is possible to produce statistics that meet the quality criteria of official statistics. Statistics Estonia makes use of databases in the case of 67% statistical actions.

Approximately 40,000 enterprises and institutions, i.e. 39% of the enterprises and institutions active in Estonia, will be submitting their data to Statistics Estonia in 2016. Data will be collected from respondents using questionnaires. In order to make the response burden more even, sample surveys where only a part of the target population of a survey is required to submit data will be used, if possible. Also, survey samples will be adjusted so that the samples of different surveys would not overlap. “In the last five years, the number of companies registered with the Commercial Register has increased by a third and the number of active companies – by approximately a quarter,” explained Mr Oopkaup. “At the same time, thanks to the use of sample surveys and databases, the number of units obliged to submit data to Statistics Estonia has not grown,” he added.

Within the framework of the project Reporting 3.0, which grew out of the zero bureaucracy initiative, the aim and structure of the data collected for taxation and statistics purposes will be reviewed and an option will be created for securely transmitting the data through the accounting software at the disposal of enterprises. In 2016, within the project Reporting 3.0, Statistics Estonia analyses the indicators of wage statistics in order to find out whether, in addition to the information in databases, it is possible to use alternative data sources and thereby reduce the response burden of enterprises.

Enterprises, institutions and organisations will get information on the questionnaires that they are required to submit in 2016 on Statistics Estonia’s website. The same questionnaires are available on Statistics Estonia’s electronic data collection channel eSTAT.