Association of German City Statisticians

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Association of German City Statisticians
(VDSt)
logo
legal form non-profit registered association
founding 1904
Seat Braunschweig
Chair Michael Haussmann
Members 375 (2019)
Website www.staedtestatistik.de

The Association of German City Statisticians (VDSt) is a registered non-profit association. The work of the association, the activities of its working groups and the publications are aimed at promoting the exchange between city statisticians as well as with urban researchers and town planners, science and official statistics, as well as strengthening the interests of municipal statistics . The results of the association's work from scientific conferences and publications are available to the interested public. The association was formally founded in 1904, its roots go back to 1879, when the heads of the newly created city statistical offices organized for the first time as part of a “conference”.

Goals and Activities

The VDSt's general meeting in Lübeck in 1998 adopted a " municipal statistical model " on which the work of the association is based.

Guiding principles

  1. Municipal statistics are an integral part of municipal information sovereignty and thus local self-government. It has an independent task profile for this. It uses and supports the other areas of official statistics.
  2. Municipal statistics get their profile from a well-founded, comprehensive, up-to-date and demand-oriented information provision for municipal-relevant decisions.
  3. Due to the strategic orientation of their products, municipal statistics are indispensable for modern city management.
  4. Municipal statistics not only have to make extensive use of developments in information technology, but also have to actively shape them and make their contribution to the development of an information management system.
  5. Municipal statistics require a high level of knowledge of methodical, organizational and technological developments on the part of those employed in this area.
  6. Municipal statistics depend on the transferability of their solution approaches.
  7. Municipal statistics offer uniformity and comparability of municipal performance through inter-municipal coordinated provision of data.
  8. Municipal statistics unleash potential synergies in conceptual, methodological and instrumental development through cooperation.
  9. The Association of German City Statisticians is committed to municipal statistics in the sense of this model and sees itself as the professional representation of all employees in municipal statistics. The association works closely with the central municipal associations.

Meetings

Statistical Week : VDSt and the German Statistical Society (DStatG) have jointly organized the Statistical Week, an annual nationwide interdisciplinary specialist congress with representatives from science, official statistics, companies and associations, since 1928. For several years now, the German Society for Demography (DGD) has also been participating in the program with its own meetings. Hosts are the municipal statisticians of the city in which the conference is being held, together with the local university.

Spring conference: The spring conference, which also takes place annually, is organized internally in different cities. It serves the intensive exchange of current and perspective topics and the networking of the city statisticians with each other.

Regional and professional working groups

The municipal statisticians belonging to the association have organized themselves into three regional working groups, namely the AG North-West (Schleswig-Holstein, Lower Saxony, Bremen, Hamburg, North Rhine-Westphalia) and the AG East (Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Brandenburg, Berlin , Saxony-Anhalt, Thuringia, Saxony) and AG Süd (Rhineland-Palatinate, Saarland, Hesse, Baden-Württemberg, Bavaria). In addition, there are four professional working groups , the AG Methodology, AG Population, AG Survey and AG Election Analysis. The work of the professional working groups has resulted in various working aids, such as most recently the booklets “Migration Background in Statistics” and “Indicator Catalog on Demographic Change”.

Workshops

The VDSt organizes workshops on particularly important topics.

  • 2007 Census workshop of the city statistics, Bonn
  • 2013 Census workshop of the city statistics, Karlsruhe
  • 2013 Open Data, Nuremberg
  • 2014 GIS and raster data workshop, Stuttgart

Training events

Together with the communal community center for administrative management (KGSt), a basic course and an advanced course on communal statistics are offered once a year in Bamberg. The target group consists primarily of new specialists in the field of municipal statistics. In addition to the legal and organizational principles, the main focus is on the data sources, methods and instruments as well as important thematic fields of municipal statistics.

Publications

The VDSt has been publishing the magazine “ Stadtforschung und Statistik ” since 1988 , of which two issues appear each year. The online version of the magazine can be read on the web. The table of contents is available for current issues. In addition to the regular issues, there are special issues of the magazine:

  • Census 2011. Documentation of the workshop "How much census does the city need?", 22./23. February 2007 in Bonn.
  • Quality of life from the citizen's perspective - German cities in comparison. Results of the coordinated public survey 2006/2007 in German and European cities.
  • Maintain federal information balance - secure local self-government. Legal opinion on the position of city statistics by Jan Ziekow, city research and statistics, special edition.

Since 2013, readers on important topics have been published in the series “ Urban Research and Statistics / Theme Book ” at irregular intervals . The first volume in this series deals with “Scenarios for demographic, social and economic development in cities and regions” and is available as a PDF document. The individual contributions are also made available in the Social Science Open Access Repository .

The working group on the population has been publishing its work aids since 2011 as “ materials for population statistics ”. So far:

  • Indicator catalog on demographic change. Working aid for monitoring and reporting systems for municipal statistics on population structure and development. Materials on population statistics, volume 1.
  • Migration background in the statistics. Definition, recording and comparability. Materials on population statistics, volume 2.

The members of the association receive a newsletter , which can also be downloaded from the association's website.

Cooperation with other societies and organizations

The VDSt is a founding member of the German Statistics Working Group (DAGStat), a network of scientific specialist societies and professional associations which include the further development of statistical theory and methodology among their main tasks. For decades there has been close cooperation with the German Statistical Society (DStatG) in organizing the Statistical Week.

The VDSt is affiliated as an organization to the International Statistical Institute (ISI). VDSt members mainly work in SCORUS, the Standing Committee on Regional and Urban Statistics. As part of the World Statistics Association ISI, SCORUS forms an international platform for questions of urban and regional research and statistics.

Important cooperation partners are the German Association of Cities (DST), the German Institute for Urban Studies (Difu), the Federal Institute for Building, Urban and Spatial Research (BBSR) and the Urban and Regional Statistics Network, which promotes professional exchange when expanding the regional statistical offers in Germany and which is moderated by the BBSR. The statistical offices of the federal and state governments, with which the VDSt works closely on a supra-regional and regional basis, are also represented in the network. Another important partner is the Federal Employment Agency (BA) with its small-scale data offering. With its Institute for Labor Market and Occupational Research (IAB), the BA is also part of the Urban and Regional Statistics Network. In 2013, the German Statistical Society and the chairman of the Regional Statistics Committee were also included in the network. Eurostat - the statistical office of the European Union - is gaining in importance for the interests of city statistics.

KOSIS association

The KOSIS-Verbund (Verbund Kommunales Statistisches Informationssystem) is a communal self-help organization that was founded in 1982 with the support of the German Association of Cities. The association now has more than 200 municipalities and other public institutions. In working groups they organize the cooperative development and maintenance of data processing instruments of the statistical information system, data collections coordinated between municipalities and joint projects related to municipal statistics. In the European Statistical System, the KOSIS Association, together with the Federal Statistical Office and the State Statistical Offices, is involved in Urban Audit, the data collection comparing cities to assess the quality of life in the European Union. The VDSt is the sponsor of the KOSIS association.

Organization of association work

The organs of the association are the general assembly and the board. The processing of the statutory tasks and the professional support of the members takes place in regional and professional working groups.

Web links

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  • Erhard Hruschka (2004): Committed to the common good - ready for cooperation. 125 years of the Association of German City Statisticians, in: Numbers and decisions 1879 - 2004. Commemorative publication for the 125th anniversary of the Association of German City Statisticians; Urban research and statistics, 2/2004, pp. 15–26, URL: PDF
  • Erhard Hruschka (2004): Personalities as guides in the history of the association, in: Numbers and decisions 1879 - 2004. Commemorative publication for the 125th anniversary of the Association of German City Statisticians; Urban research and statistics, 2/2004, pp. 28–31, URL: PDF
  • Heinz Grohmann (2004): From the roots of statistics to information management, in: Numbers and decisions 1879 - 2004. Commemorative publication for the 125th anniversary of the Association of German City Statisticians; Urban research and statistics, 2/2004, pp. 32–42, URL: PDF
  1. ↑ About us. In: staedtestatistik.de. Retrieved November 15, 2019 .