First machine-to-machine submitted data on wages reached Statistics Estonia

According to Marek Začek, head of Enterprise and Agricultural Statistics Department at Statistics Estonia, the objective of the project Reporting 3.0 is to develop an automated data transmission channel for enterprises. Using such a channel means that enterprises do not have to fill in questionnaires for several data collectors but can transmit accounting data directly from their IT systems. “Enterprise’s administrative burden is significantly reduced when the option is created to transmit the collected data automatically as a background activity, and calculating necessary indicators based on the source data becomes the data collector’s task”, explained Začek.

Valdek Järvpõld, project manager of software company Skriining and a member of the Council of Association of Estonian Accountants, noted that the accounting software update was developed in close cooperation with Statistics Estonia and Ida-Viru central hospital. “It was an inspiring experience and the client’s feedback was positive. I recommend that businesses ask their software developers solutions for automatic data transmission and that they adopt these – it will make life easier,” he added. Järvpõld explained that for a software company preparing a report in the Reporting 3.0 format is a one-time additional activity comparable to what needs to be done in case of a legal amendment or a new statistical report. “However, further developments are not required and it is also not necessary to draw up reports with the same data for different institutions,” he commented on the advantages.

Ida-Viru central hospital is the largest contracting party of the Estonian Health Insurance Fund and the only central hospital in Viru region. It employs nearly 1,200 people. The hospital’s wages data are a valuable input for Statistics Estonia to calculate the median wages of Estonia, the county and economic activity. “We submit wages data every month, so we were very interested in automatic data transmission,” said chief accountant Urve Ojamaa. “The first user experience is very positive and our first prognosis gives hope that we could save at least 15 work days of an accountant by transmitting wages data automatically,” added Ojamaa.

How does machine-to-machine data transmission work?

Data collectors (Statistics Estonia, the Tax and Customs Board and Eesti Pank) develop a single taxonomy for the collected data. For managing the taxonomy and transmitting data, business software developers take care of the necessary technical side. When the relevant capability has been added in the data provider’s accounting software and the data provider has applied the settings for the enterprise, it is possible to transmit data according to the taxonomy directly from the accounting software to all data collectors at once. The data transmission takes place via the secure data exchange layer X-Road.

The project Reporting 3.0, which grew out of the zero bureaucracy initiative, creates a solution for the automatic or respondent-initiated movement of data that are necessary for the state based on the ideas of minimalism and simplicity.