Research data centers for official statistics
The 2001 / 2002 established research data centers of official statistics are institutions of research data infrastructure in Germany. They serve to improve scientific access to the microdata of official statistics. Of the statistical offices and the Federal Statistical Office of the were on the recommendation of the Commission for improving the informational infrastructure between science and statistics , two such research data centers set up the Research Data Center of the Statistical Offices and the Research Data Center of the Federal Statistical Office .
General
With these two institutions, the statistical offices of the federal and state governments in Germany are intensifying their efforts to make microdata of official statistics accessible for scientific analyzes. With complementary work and structural focuses, the research data centers are intended to meet the growing data needs of empirical science. In close cooperation between the two research data centers, a coordinated range of services for the scientific use of microdata from official statistics is to be created. In the development phase, both projects are financially supported by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF).
goals and tasks
The fundamental aim of the research data centers of the statistical offices of the federal and state governments is to improve access to the microdata of official statistics and their possible uses by setting up different data usage channels. An essential prerequisite for achieving this goal is the fundamental improvement of the data infrastructure through its regionalization as well as through the establishment of a technically centralized data storage for selected statistics and through the establishment of a metadata system.
Functionally centralized data storage
In Germany, the majority of statistics are carried out decentrally in the state statistical offices, so that over 90 percent of all microdata in official statistics is collected, processed and stored there. However, since scientific analyzes usually refer to several federal states or the entire federal territory, the state statistical offices set up a technically centralized data storage. With this it will be possible to provide and use the microdata of the official statistics at all regional locations of the two research data centers.
Regionalized infrastructure
As part of a new infrastructure for data provision, the research data centers offer, among other things, the use of de facto anonymized microdata in one of the statistical offices - as part of what is known as on-site use. In the Federal Statistical Office and in the State Statistical Offices, partitioned off PC workstations are being set up for visiting researchers. The presence in all federal states ensures nationwide access to this form of use for science.
Metadata system
In order for the microdata of the official statistics to be analyzed and interpreted, comprehensive background information about the data sets as well as about the collection, processing and quality of the data is necessary. For this purpose, the research data centers of the statistical offices of the federal and state governments will develop a metadata system in which users can obtain information about the surveys of official statistics via the Internet.