EUROPEAN COMMISSION Brussels, 24.8.2016 SWD(2016) 283 final COMMISSION STAFF WORKING DOCUMENT



IMPACT ASSESSMENT

Accompanying the document REGULATION OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL establishing a common framework for European statistics relating to persons and households, based on data at individual level collected from samples {COM(2016) 551 final}

{SWD(2016) 282 final}



Table of content 1.Introduction and context 1.1.Background 1.2.Objective of this report and procedural information elements 1.3.Consultation of interested parties 1.4.Content of the report 2.Problem definition: What is the problem and why is it a problem 2.1.Background 2.2.Problem drivers 2.2.1.Domain fragmentation of social statistics 2.2.2.Inflexibility of data collection on persons and households 2.3.Problems currently faced 2.3.1.Lack of responsiveness to societal needs 2.3.2.Quality issues of data collection 2.3.3.Hampered use of innovative methods and sources 2.3.4.Inability to reduce and limit costs for social statistics 2.4.Assessing the costs of social statistics 2.4.1.Estimating the costs of the current situation

2.4.2.Defining the parameters for cost estimations 2.4.3.Potential for costs reduction 2.4.4.Burden on respondents 2.5.Conclusion 3.Why the EU should act 4.Policy objectives: what should be achieved 4.1.Objectives 4.2.Coherence of objectives with other EU policies 5.Policy options: what are the various options to achieve the objectives 5.1.Background 5.2.Addressing the domain fragmentation of social statistics 5.3.Addressing rigidity of data collection 6.Analysis of impacts: What are the policy impacts of the different policy options and who will be affected 6.1.Introduction 6.2.Assessing impacts: addressing domain fragmentation 6.2.1.Baseline (option 1.0): no additional action 6.2.2.Policy option 1.1: No change EU legislation, ‘defragment’ production processes across data collections 6.2.3.Policy option 1.2: Integrate EU legislation, no change in the fragmentation of production processes 6.2.4.Policy option 1.3a: Integrate existing Regulations, ‘defragment’ production processes 6.2.5.Policy option 1.3b: Integrate social statistics governance in combination with defragmentation of national processes across data collections

6.2.6.Summary of impacts 6.3.Assessing impacts: addressing rigidity of data collection 6.3.1.Introducing policy options 6.3.2.Summary of impacts 7.Combining the different options: Impacts of shortlisted options 7.1.Short-listing policy options 7.2.Intervention logic and legal basis 7.3.Impacts on effectiveness 7.4.Impacts on efficiency 7.5.Impacts on stakeholder 7.6.Impacts on SMEs 7.7.Economic impacts 7.8.Social impacts 7.9.Environmental impacts 7.10.Impacts on fundamental rights 8.Monitoring and evaluation: How would actual impacts be monitored and evaluated Annex 1: Procedural information Annex 2: Stakeholder consultation Annex 3: Who is affected by the initiative and how Annex 4: Analytical models used in preparing the impact assessment.

Annex 5: Details on the impact assessment of the options addressing the rigidity of the data collection. 1.1Introducing policy options 1.2. Baseline (option 2.0): Programmatic and technical elements mainly fixed by basic law 1.3. Policy option 2.1: Programmatic elements fixed by law / technicalities more flexible 1.4. Policy option 2.2: Programmatic / technical elements flexible 1.5. Summary of impacts 1.Introduction and context 1.1.Background Official statistics and indicators are essential elements for evidence based policy making, both at the national and the EU level, and for social and economic research. Several high level policy frameworks, like the European semester, including the Macroeconomic Imbalance Procedure, the Excessive Deficit Procedure and Europe 2020 intensively use statistical information and indicators comparable across EU. The very large majority of these data are compiled by Eurostat and the European Statistical System (ESS). Many other regulatory frameworks, processes and monitoring tools at EU level require statistics and indicators, in the forms of scoreboards, frameworks, organised indicators sets, etc. High quality and comprehensive EU statistics are therefore essential for evidence based EU policy making and monitoring. They are also needed in the national context, as national authorities have more and more the necessity to benchmark their situation in comparison with the rest of the EU, for instance in terms of productivity, taxation or social protection systems, employment or inequalities. High quality and encompassing statistics are also important for improving the EU knowledge base, for the citizens and the media, but also largely in scientific and applied research performed by scientists and other researchers that can help to identify important trends and future policy challenges, or explain why certain developments occur. Such research increases significantly the EU knowledge base and thus influences directly or indirectly (through overall better knowledge and deep insight into specific issues) the effectiveness of policy making in EU and Member States context. Moreover, high quality statistics are needed to look beyond the current context: their existence will allow in the future identifying and developing new policy frameworks and targets. The importance of statistics is not limited to the time span of the current strategies. To take an example in the recent past, setting up the indicator based targets for the EU 2020 strategy was made possible only because the statistical base was rich enough to measure and monitor these targets. At this occasion, new use of existing data showed the importance of developing and maintaining basic statistics flexible enough to answer rapidly to new policy requirements. Over the last decades, the role and importance of statistics, as well as the mechanism used to produce them and to ensure their quality have been reinforced through various regulatory measures. In that context, the role of social statistics is becoming more and more important. Traditionally, several macroeconomic indicators have been used to monitor the socioeconomic situation in the EU and in the Member States, but policies increasingly require social statistics in order to elaborate and monitor their impact on citizens, in particular relating to their employment situation, their living conditions, education, health, etc. The Commission has explicitly underlined that social statistics should be treated on a par with macroeconomic statistics. Social indicators should assist in reinforcing the social dimension of the European Union and the European Monetary Union (EMU) in the context of the European Semester; social indicators should fully provide evidence for EU priorities relating to jobs, the reduction of poverty and social exclusion, improving skills and mobility. Also, the priorities that policies need to address may change and the need for high quality social statistics is expected to increase even further in the future, for instance in the context of the new European pillar of social rights. To support these objectives and requirements, social statistics need to be modernised to become more flexible and responsive to user requests; to improve timeliness; and to increase efficiency. The ESS which brings together the Commission (Eurostat) and the National Statistical Institutes, representing the Member States, have agreed that, to be relevant, this modernisation should be based in particular on streamlining social surveys, ensuring reliable sample frames, developing access and use of new data sources and on the standardisation of components and processes in the ESS. Therefore, the initiative covered by this impact assessment takes place in a context that matches the priorities of the Commission and the analysis and orientations offered by the ESS. Social statistics can be grouped into three main categories, according to their data sources, their methods and their purposes. The first category covers the “statistics relating to households and persons” usually labelled social surveys. Actually, part of the information provided in that context no longer comes from direct interviews, but from administrative sources that allows giving information for the individuals or households that are part of the sample. The cost of collection of this information from administrative sources is lower, but does not eliminate the need for interviews, as not all the countries have access to administrative sources and not all the required information is present in the administrative sources The second category comprises the statistics collected at an aggregated level, without data at individual level. This concerns for instance the receipt and expenditure of the social protection systems, the health systems, the education systems. These data stem from administrative sources not individualised when transmitted to Eurostat.

A third group consists in the data linked to population and demography, that were traditionally centred on the decennial census but that are nowadays evolving towards new forms of data capture, also linked to more efficient and accessible registration of individuals. All these categories are evolving. The modernisation programme for social statistics covers all of them. However, given their diversity and complexity, a stepwise approach has been taken that starts with social surveys which represent the most ambitious domain and the domain that offers most possibilities for integration. The aggregated administrative data (second category) and the population and housing census (third category) will be dealt with at different stages of the modernisation process. The current production of European statistics on persons and households is fragmented into stove-piped domains that function independently from each other. This is related to the fact that, traditionally, each domain and its related statistical processes are governed by a specific survey, based on a separate regulation (or informal agreement) that aims to inform a particular economic or social topic, e.g. the labour force survey for unemployment or the adult education survey for lifelong learning. One outstanding feature of policy making at EU level, is that it requires more and more multidimensional information in the form of statistical data that encompass several dimensions and their interactions in a timely, flexible and responsive manner in order to address new policy priorities The data needs under the current high level policy strategies offer good illustrations of the improvements required in social statistics. For instance, the data on inequalities and poverty are available too late for being fully used in the context of the EU Semester, which is largely based on national accounts. some domains high on the policy agenda, like skills and human capital in relation to employability and the labour market or intra-EU mobility are only partially covered: providing statistical evidence on the issues requires the combination of several data sources including the labour force survey, the education survey, and the information and communications technology household survey. The concerns expressed also by the Commission for fairness in policy making and the recent academic activities concerning rising inequalities requires knowledge of the joint distribution of income, consumption and wealth. Therefore, the compatibility and integration of income and living conditions survey, the household budget survey and more information on wealth are needed. developing information on ageing, transition to retirements and the silver economy requires compatibility and integration between income and living conditions, health and labour force surveys, developing information on new forms of work, linked for instance to the working poor situations requires the possibility of organising quickly the collection of data by countries in the forms of modules attached to existing surveys. All in all, increasing new data needs and expectations, availability of new data sources, pressures on resources (cost and response burden) and innovations in methodology and IT create a quickly changing context for social statistics. Therefore, social statistics have to continue to develop and improve to face the challenges EU and Member States are confronted with. The main objectives of such developments are -Responsiveness to users' needs, with appropriate level of quality and flexibility -Efficiency of the production system, that takes advantage of innovation and of new data sources, and that takes into account the burden for respondents and costs for NSIs, in a context of declining resources for statistical production in the Member States. In that context, it is necessary to update the regulatory framework governing the production of social statistics concerning individuals and households with a view to enabling these improvements. 1.2.Objective of this report and procedural information elements As a renewed legal basis for the production of EU statistics and indicators for individuals and households is being reflected upon, a revision of the legal acts currently in force has been introduced in the agenda planning in the REFIT context (2014/ESTAT/002). The preparation of this impact assessment (IA) started in 2014 with the aim of comparing the impacts of different streamlining options. As this was prior to the adoption of the Better Regulation guidelines, there has been no such specific evaluation of the current situation done to support this initiative. However, the regular evaluation mechanism in place at Eurostat (quality reports, rolling reviews, evaluation of the European statistical programme, management plans as well as an ex-post analysis of the current situation e.g. through discussions with NSIs, interviews with main users, public consultation targeting general users and thorough desk research) formed a central element of the IA process. An inception impact assessment was published in July 2015 . An inter-service steering group (ISG) was established in July 2015 and involves the following DGs: Secretariat-General (SG), Budget (BUGET), Justice (JUST) Education and Culture (EAC), Neighbourhood and Enlargement Negotiations (NEAR), Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion (EMPL), Migration and Home Affairs (HOME), Regional and Urban Policy (REGIO), Health and Food Safety (SANTE), Economic and Financial Affairs (ECFIN) and Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs (GROW), as well as the Legal Service (SJ). The ISG met twice prior to the submission of the IA draft report to the Regulatory Scrutiny Board (RSB), the first meeting was held on 9 July 2015, and the second took place on 27 January 2016. 1.3.Consultation of interested parties As statistics are produced for policy users and by data producers in the Member States (national statistical institutes – NSIs), the consultation of these stakeholders that would be the most affected by a change in requirements had a particular importance in the context of this IA.

The input from stakeholders (in particular the new requests from users and the constraints by the NSIs) has been extensively considered and analysed during the reflection on the need for a renewed legislative basis for social statistics. They were also consulted at the occasion of this IA. The approach to and methodology of the consultation have been agreed upon by the ISG. The consultation was carried out during July-December 2015. Annex 2 contains a more detailed overview of the consultation process and an overview of the main results. Separate reports contain the results per type of stakeholder that are accessible as hyperlinked and listed in annex 2. The following stakeholders were targeted for consultation: Data producers: this category comprises the authorities responsible for the collection and compilation of social statistics. It mainly includes the NSIs and Eurostat. However, in this context, the data producers are at the same time the main representative of the primary data providers, i.e. the households and persons. Data providers: this category includes not only the respondents but also national institutions that are keepers of administrative data files, such as for example, Ministries, the national Social Security or Tax Administration. The NSIs in the broader sense, are seen as a proxy of the primary data providers (i.e. households and persons), given the difficulty of conducting stakeholder interviews within this category. Data users: within this group a distinction can be made between institutional users – Commission DGs users, national administrations, other international organisations, or professional staff working within other EU institutions, and other external users, such as mass media and academics. Amongst data users, a special mention of a particular body that has been consulted should be made: the European Statistical Advisory Committee (ESAC), established in 2008, by the Decision No 234/2008/EC of the European Parliament and the Council. It gathers 24 members representing users, respondents and other stakeholders of European Statistics (including the scientific community, social partners and civil society) as well as institutional users (like e.g., the Council and the European Parliament) According to article 8 of the Statistical Regulation (223/2009), the ESAC could be consulted in the process of possible new legislation. The consultations, their process, consultation instruments and results are detailed in three specific reports. 1.4. Content of the report This report sets out to define the problems (chapter 2) and explain the need for an EU action (chapter 3). Next, the objectives to be achieved (chapter 4) and the policy options envisaged are presented (chapter 5). These policy options include both baseline and alternative scenarios. Chapter 6 is dedicated to the analysis of the impacts of the policy options and chapter 7 presents an optimal solution and its impacts. Lastly, chapter 8 explains the monitoring and evaluation activities that could be foreseen. Additional information is presented in five annexes: (1)Procedural information (2)Stakeholder consultation, including hyperlinks to three separate consultation reports (3)Who is affected by the initiative and how (4)Analytical models used in preparing the IA (5)Details on the IA of the options addressing the rigidity of the data collection.



2.Problem definition: What is the problem and why is it a problem 2.1.Background The context of producing social statistics has been changing substantially and rapidly. The ESS has recognised the challenges in high-level policy documents, such as the Wiesbaden Memorandum for the modernisation of social statistics, the ESS Vision and the ESS strategy. The text below briefly explores these challenges and focuses on how these relate to the European system of social statistics and its legislative environment.

Former analysis and consultations allowed for establishing a list of problems in social statistics and possible relations of causality between drivers and problems. This list was described in the documents accompanying the consultation with stakeholders for discussion and opinion. The consulted stakeholders – general users, policy users and NSIs - acknowledged such problems. The perceived problems can be summarised as follows: •Data users are concerned with the risk of European official statistics lacking relevance (usefulness), due to a combination of availability and quality issues (coverage of emerging social issues, insufficient and constrained timeliness and limited comparability and coherence); •Data producers (NSIs) are concerned with the production costs, the budget constraints or reductions and the pressure to cover the informational needs in a context of emerging social crises within a short timeframe. Response burden is also an issue (risk of decreasing response rates and thereby, data quality). NSIs indicate they receive insufficient support for their modernisation processes (innovation in technology, methodology, use of new data sources, management, etc.), through which they intend to address the need of decreasing production costs. Statistical quality This document often refers to quality of statistics. This concept is multidimensional and well defined in the ESS. It concerns first the quality of the statistical output, as spelt out in the regulation 2009/223 on European statistics, in terms of: -Relevance: meeting the users' needs, -Accuracy and reliability: portraying accurately and reliably the reality, -Timeliness and punctuality, referring both to the fast availability of information and its publication at the time foreseen, -Coherence and comparability: statistics are consistent internally, over time and comparable between regions and countries; it is possible to combine and make joint use of related data from different sources, -Accessibility and clarity: statistics are presented in a clear and understandable form, released in a suitable and convenient manner, available and accessible on an impartial basis with supporting metadata and guidance. One can see that it is sometimes needed to make some trade-offs between the different dimensions of quality, for instance, increasing timeliness could come at the cost of accuracy, with for instance the publication of provisional data. Furthermore, not only the quality of the output has to be considered in a quality assurance framework, but also consideration about institutional environment (like statistical independence) or control over the processes, that includes non-excessive burden. This chapter presents the problems related to the existing legal bases in the area of European social statistics. It starts by identifying the underlying problem drivers. Subsequently, it presents the problems identified, which can be classified in a broad category of ineffectiveness and inefficiencies. The context of the European social statistics changes rapidly and therefore, also contributes to problems. For this reason, such contextual factors are also explicitly discussed. 2.2.Problem drivers The stakeholder consultation and additional available documents provided input for the problem definition. This section starts with the identified problem drivers, after which the main problems are presented. The concluding section summarises the problems and their drivers as described in this section by means of a problem tree. The following problem drivers have been identified: •Domain fragmentation of social statistics. •Inflexibility of data collection on persons and households. These will be described in more detail below. 2.2.1.Domain fragmentation of social statistics For many decades, the production of European statistics has been based on a model in which the NSIs produce their national statistics in a particular domain, based on manuals and guidelines provided by Eurostat. The production of statistics in Member States operates through the various production lines or processes of the different statistical domains. For each domain, the whole production process from survey design over data collection and processing to dissemination, takes place independently of other domains, and each has its own data suppliers and user groups. In order to guarantee comparability and consistency among the data of all Member States, the output from NSIs is harmonised ex ante at EU level according to agreed standards that vary across the data collections. This "stovepipe model" is the outcome of a long historic process, in which statistics in individual domains have developed in low coordination from one another, even if the intention was to maintain consistency between them. An illustrative example of the barrier that the domain fragmentation presents is the integrated statistical analysis at household level of the income, consumption and wealth (ICW). At micro data level, ICW data have traditionally been collected separately, which does not allow joint distributions to be fully captured. At EU level, three data sources are available: SILC: a harmonised and regulated survey that covers income in detail as well as the living conditions of the households; HBS: a partially harmonised and non-regulated survey that covers consumption in detail and also income in several countries; the Household Finance and Consumption Survey (HFCS): financed and run by the ECB for the Euro area and a few pre-in countries, it covers wealth in detail, main income components and some elements of consumption. The current legal structure that governs the production of European statistics on persons and households reflects this stovepipe model. There are currently five legal bases adopted by the European Parliament and the Council for European social surveys which are listed in the table below. Several of these acts are complemented by additional application measures. •LFS: Council Regulation (EC) No 577/98 of 9 March 1998, on the organisation of a labour force sample survey in the Community, OJ L 77, 14.3.1998. p. 3–7 •SILC: Regulation (EC) No 1177/2003 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 16 June 2003 concerning Community statistics on income and living conditions (EU-SILC), OJ L 165, 3.7.2003, p. 1–9 •AES: Regulation (EC) No 452/2008 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 23 April 2008 concerning the production and development of statistics on education and lifelong learning, OJ L 145, 4.6.2008, p. 227–233 •EHIS: Regulation (EC) No 1338/2008 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 16 December 2008 on Community statistics on public health and health and safety at work, OJ L 354, 31.12.2008, p. 70–81 •ICT-HH: Regulation (EC) No 808/2004 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 21 April 2004 concerning Community statistics on the information society, OJ L 143, 30.4.2004, p. 49–55

The current legislative system regulating European Social Statistics is mainly output-based. The various domain-specific Regulations list for each of the different data collections the type of data that NSIs need to collect, and subsequently list the technical quality criteria that the data needs to meet. As a result, the current legal system does not include common principles that would support the integration between the different domains. 2.2.2.Inflexibility of data collection on persons and households The five domain-specific regulations for social surveys fix the contents and the required detailed requirements of the data collection (sample size, quality criteria, transmission requirements, etc.). As a result, each element that needs to be changed, either technical in nature or with regard to the statistical programming, needs to undergo a lengthy process involving multiple organisations (NSIs and ONA, other Commission services, international organisations with whom cooperation agreements for statistical production are implemented like the OECD, the ILO, the WHO), to then finally, most of the time, enter the ordinary legislative procedure and be voted upon by the European Parliament and Council. Under the current legal setup very technical matters (on the scope of statistical operations, on variable definitions and breakdowns, etc.) is referred to the Parliament and Council, which risks diverting their attention away from the essential task of balancing European information requirements against cost and response burden. As an example, the Regulation (EU) No 545/2014 on the organisation of a labour force survey (LFS) foresees some possibilities for a limited set of variables to be collected each year so as to answer specific policy needs. However, the programme of collection of this limited set has to be prepared long in advance. As a result, the first discussion for the programme covering the period 2019-2021 had to start in the working groups in 2014. These discussions with Member States experts have just been finalised and the draft legal act launched in February 2016. As a result, the possibility to adapt to emerging needs until 2022 cannot any longer be envisaged in the LFS context. 2.3.Problems currently faced In the context of societal changes, the problem drivers described above lead to a number of issues. As will be shown in more detail below, each of these problems impacts the role of social statistics as input for policymaking. The ultimate consequence of this is that the statistics collected by Eurostat risk gradually losing relevance for policymakers and other data users. At the same time, under the influence of the identified problems, the system of social statistics becomes increasingly inefficient, in the sense that the cost of data production and the response burden are higher than strictly necessary. Three problems have been distinguished that risk diminishing the relevance of social statistics: •Lack of responsiveness to users’ needs; •Quality issues; •Hampered use of innovative methods of data collection and of available data sources. In addition, the combination of these three problems, when set against the greater context of societal changes, also contributes to increasing inefficiencies: • Inability to reduce and limit cost and burden of data collection. These weaknesses show that the current system of social statistics has reached its limits in the current regulatory framework. 2.3.1.Lack of responsiveness to societal needs The availability of timely and high quality social statistics that are in particular coherent and comparable across various social domains is a crucial input for policymaking in the European Union, both at EU and national levels. The Commission’s initiative on Smart Regulation emphasises the importance of high quality data, for instance to monitor headline targets under Europe 2020, such as the employment, education and social inclusion targets. The emerging information needs for the identification of new societal challenges and changes (for example on ageing populations, changing labour markets, globalisation, migration or sustainability), and the increasing use in EU policies of quantitative objectives and thresholds making use of statistical indicators, increasingly confront Eurostat and the NSIs with high quality requirements – including timeliness – for new indicators . The European Statistical Advisory Committee (ESAC) underlines the need for the European Statistical System to develop possibilities that allow linking micro- and macro-data, ensure timeliness and access to indicators with more disaggregation, and integrate different social groups. However, under the current system, many changes to the existing data collections, or methodological innovations, have to be changed in the main legal act. This requires having these changes approved by the European Parliament and Council before they can be implemented. This constitutes a long legislative process, which has considerable consequences for the responsiveness to societal needs. A good illustration of this situation is that when social topics are not covered by European official statistics, the European Commission and other EU institutions collect and disseminate other statistical operations (e.g. the Eurobarometer, the European Social Survey, the European Quality of Life Survey) which can respond quicker to aspects of emerging information needs. However, these do not benefit from the technical support of EU NSIs and therefore, do not have a similar high level of statistical quality. Furthermore, the rise of various technologies has raised users’ expectations to receive information quickly and as a personalised service. Influenced by increased availability of data processing and visualisation software, “data fluent” users increasingly demand more quantity and quality data. Moreover, the use of Internet has made users more and more accustomed to being able to find the information they look for in a timely manner. Official statistics may look sluggish in comparison. A striking example relates to the objectives of more timely availability and dissemination of SILC data. The main aims are to significantly advance the dissemination date from December N+2 (delay that would not be imaginable in non-official surveys) to December of year N+1, with first estimates in June N+1. Today's information market can meet this demand for quick and inexpensive data, albeit at an (often) rather dubious quality. Finally, the current design of domain-specific regulations requires NSIs to collect social statistics according to a similar domain-specific approach. While it produces important and useful data in each of the specific domains, it is of limited use for collecting data on phenomena that cover multiple dimensions, such as inequalities, mobility, globalisation or climate change.

These problems were recognised by producers and users alike in the consultation process: •NSIs agree that the slow capacity of the ESS to adapt to new information needs will cause loss of relevance of European statistics (7/10). •However, NSIs consider that the loss of relevance is not so much due to fragmented legislation, than to the inability to quickly react to users’ needs. At the same time, there are opinions that a legal framework easing the use of administrative sources would facilitate combining sources and allow for the inclusion of new relevant topics that would increase the relevance of social statistics. •Without neglecting what has been done so far, European policymakers require more responsiveness from the ESS. Better responsiveness implies the ability to quickly accommodate emerging informational needs into the European statistical programmes (multi-annual and annual), but also into the national statistical plans. A specific wish is for SILC data to be available earlier, with very significantly improved timeliness. •The information needs of data users in general (e.g. researchers, media, interest groups, businesses, NGOs, etc.) were to some extent, not met over the last year or two (e.g. topics related to social impact of the crisis). Furthermore, those data users that need more timely data (e.g. business, freelancers, media and NGOs) are not satisfied with the capacity of adaptation of European social statistics to new user needs. •From the point of view of data users, greater attention to social developments and simplification of legal procedures would improve the relevance and timeliness of European social statistics. 2.3.2.Quality issues of data collection In general, European social statistics are considered to be of high quality. Concerns expressed in the area of data quality are with regards to two major issues: •the use of new methods of data collection (including administrative sources) has to be framed within the regular quality scheme; •coherence between data from different surveys has to be better ensured. The use of modern data collection techniques is not sufficiently supported by current European legislation. Because statistical legislation is mainly output-based, NSIs have often chosen different directions based on the national contexts and needs. At European level, this leads to the need to better frame the data quality. NSIs acknowledge that this diversity of approaches poses considerable problems for the coherence and comparability of social statistics. Coherence between different social data collections, another dimension of quality, is fundamental to address multi-dimensional social issues. Both NSIs and users consider the lack of coherence and comparability of social statistical operations to be a consequence of the methodological aspects and of the historical development of European social statistics as separate “stovepipes” with distinct methodologies and production processes. The existing regulations either have perpetuated or have not addressed these situations. The fragmented legal framework poses an immediate challenge to overcoming the lack of coherence and comparability between data collections, as any uniform change to quality requirements on social data collection needs to be amended in all domain-specific regulations. The lack of coherence across European social statistics is a major problem for all stakeholders, however, especially so for the users. An illustrative example is the different reference periods for measuring the participation in adult learning, information required by the Europe 2020 Agenda. The LFS considers the past 4 weeks while the AES refers to the past 12 months, leading to different results, lack of understanding of the statistical sources and possibly lack of focus in the corresponding social policies. The results of the open public consultation showed that the respondents perceived that social surveys were not fully coherent or aligned. It is important to highlight that data other than official statistics from Eurostat have been used by the respondents with a certain frequency, due to perceived incoherence and comparability problems. Producers of European statistics also consider the lack of coherence and comparability (in time, between countries) a major issue; when asked about the magnitude of this problem on a scale from 0-10, NSIs awarded this problem on average with a 7, while NSIs in 10 Member States awarded this problem between 8-10. 2.3.3.Hampered use of innovative methods and sources Modern statistical production comprises increasingly integrated business processes in order to exploit the strongly growing capacities of information technology. Such integrated business processes comprise e.g. multi-source/cross-domain data integration, integrated management of registers and statistical frames, creation/maintenance of common infrastructure, common standards and tools for data processing, exchange and dissemination and standardised quality assessments. Very often developments in one Member State could be implemented in others, leading to cost reduction, with the condition that procedures are standardised. A pilot exercise showed the potential of the use of innovative statistical methods know as data matching, not currently envisaged in the legal texts, as a tool to produce additional, cross-survey data. The potential benefits of this approach lie in the possibility to enhance the complementary use and analysis of existing data sources (for instance, labour and wage surveys), without further increasing costs and response burden. The study showed that, without ex-ante design of surveys – a consequence of the stovepipe model - to facilitate the application of the technique, the results lack the necessary quality. As the use of modern data collection techniques is not sufficiently supported by the current European legislation, NSIs have often chosen different directions based on the national contexts and needs. For some Member States, the absence of provisions in European legislation is the main impediment towards developing innovative methods. Some NSIs for instance, report that European legislation promoting the use of administrative registers would make it easier for them to obtain access to such registers. In addition to legal provisions, most NSIs indicate that technical work at EU level on harmonising concepts used by administrative registers with the statistical standards would also benefit the quality of statistics.

New data sources and collection tools and conditions for their use in statistics The “internet footprint” or “big data” is a promising new data source. It is being seriously investigated by Eurostat and the NSIs. At this stage, it is acknowledged that these data sources can act as early signals, like for instance in the case of increasing internet activity linked to job search, with some limitations. In some statistical domains like transports, more is to be expected in the shorter run. Still, one should also have in mind that big data cannot at this stage give an unemployment rate and that no analysis of the increase of internet job search can be performed, like for instance by age, sex, duration of the unemployment spell, characteristics of the households, occupation and skills, etc. The use of administrative data for statistical purposes is an on-going process. It refers to the fact that the statistical authority, instead of asking some information to the respondent, is retrieving this information about the respondent from existing administrative sources collected for other purposes. This approach is quite cost effective, as it limits the interview time (main source of costs for surveys) and sometime some types of errors. Some limitations have however to be noted Not all the Member States have access to the administrative sources, due to regulatory or administrative environment or due to their non-existence. The administrative sources do not cover all the required information. It is recognised that, for instance, unemployment (with the internationally ILO accepted definition) can only be collected through interviews. Administrative data sources are built for the administrative purpose they pursue: they do not reflect directly the statistical concept intended to be measured (further processing is needed in order to ensure adaptation to the common concept), their coverage and update are not necessarily those of the statistical activity, several administrative sources of diverse quality might be in existence for the same information, etc. A special mention should be made about timeliness: administrative data are produced at their rhythm, which is in several instances too slow for the users’ requirements. Administrative data organisations are very diverse across Member States and not comparable. In Member States highly advanced with the use of administrative data, the users’ questions are often reformulated in a way that is answerable by administrative sources. Considering the diversity of the situation in the Member States, this approach is not an option for EU statistics. New data collection tools and innovative approaches are being developed. In particular, the use of the web interview is growing. It is an efficient approach. However, one should also keep in mind that the experiments made are showing a selection bias (those answering differs from the “normal” population) and a mode effect (the respondent does not give necessarily the same answer in front of the computer and in a face to face interview) and also that the data collector does not know who has answered. From what has been explained, it could be concluded that new data sources and collection methods are to be promoted, as more efficient. However, it can also be concluded that quality concerns are significantly present in these new forms, in particular concerning timeliness, comparability, accuracy and possible biases. Therefore, progress in that direction should be framed further by adapted methodologies and experiments and their use legally linked with the quality they are able to provide. The envisaged scenarios fully support this approach. All things considered, the restrictions in using innovative methods and sources increasingly show the limits of the current legal setup for European social statistics. Ultimately, this would also have strong repercussions for policymakers. 2.3.4.Inability to reduce and limit costs for social statistics In the previous section, several issues were highlighted that influence both the effectiveness and the efficiency of the European social statistics data collection. In particular, •Many changes require modifying the legal basis through a long legislative process. •Setting up alternative data collection by the users may result in inefficient use of resources. •Using innovative data collection methods and IT, as well as using alternative sources, can improve efficiency, while preserving or increasing the quality of statistics, but the use of new methods and sources can be at odds with the current Regulations as they are developed with more traditional forms of statistical production in mind. •In some Member States, the absence of provisions in European legislation is the main impediment for developing innovative methods. Both obtaining access to administrative sources and learning from other NSI’s experiences, were mentioned in this context. NSIs consider the exchange of experiences, tools and techniques in IT and data collection solutions amongst Member States to be valuable (e.g. through the collaborative networks across the ESS). In addition, the current “stovepipe” environment has led to inefficiencies in the sense of avoidable costs for NSIs and increasing burden for respondents, as the same information has to be collected in several data collections. The European Statistical Advisory Committee also refers to the need to limit the burden placed on data producers and call for more coordinating of the various surveys. Finally, significant elements of methodologies for social surveys differ from one survey to another, decreasing data comparability. The work on standardisation of social variables has indeed identified up to 45 variables that appear in different statistical operations. Various NSIs report in the consultation that they have attempted to integrate the production of social statistics. However, such potential cost-savings due to harmonisation at national level are largely undone, because the current legal environment requires the NSIs to transmit their data according to the domain-specific methods. 2.4.Assessing the costs of social statistics 2.4.1.Estimating the costs of the current situation This section presents a rough estimate of the costs of social statistics. This baseline estimation on the cost of social statistics is based on the input received from stakeholders. Estimating the cost of surveys is a complex task, and has been debated by NSIs for decades. Attempts to standardise the methods for cost accounting have been made, but they are generally focused on household surveys carried out on a project basis. For recurrent surveys carried out by NSIs, some costs are spread over the entire statistical production (e.g. management costs of NSIs, IT infrastructure, training of specialists). In the case of social statistics using administrative registers, the accounting for costs of the process of collecting such administrative records is not borne by NSIs, but is still covered by government budgets. However, the additional costs for transmission to NSIs for statistical purposes are marginal with respect to the administrative data collection system. Differences in staff salaries and country size in terms of population and territory, add difficulties in obtaining comparable data. Differences in frequency of surveys require the consideration of an annualised cost division of the total costs of a survey by the number of years between rounds (for instance, the cost of a survey carried out every 5 years is simply annualised by dividing this total cost by 5). It is important to note that the production process has a significant impact on overall cost levels. The use of modern technologies for data collection (e.g. telephone or web-based collection vs face-to-face interviews or re-use of administrative registers already collected), efficient data processing (re-use of software for data entry, validation and tabulation) and data dissemination (standardised publication processes) etc., can decrease the production costs in the medium- and long-term after the initial investments are absorbed. Not all countries were able to provide cost estimates with the breakdown by broad statistical phases (design, data collection and data treatment and dissemination). No information has been collected on the disaggregation of costs according to investments for each phase of the statistical process (e.g. development of new tools for data collection) and current expenditure (e.g. salaries of interviewers carrying out the data collection). Therefore, the figures presented in this section have to be considered with care, as they do not represent a detailed accountancy of the cost of social surveys. The aggregative costs of the production of the social surveys considered for social statistics amounts to roughly €294 million for implementing each of the surveys in the reporting Member States. If we break down the costs of all surveys per year, as indicated in the table below, then this amounts to €176 million per year.



Survey Interview duration (Median in minutes) Aggregated Cost (Mio€) Frequency Annualised cost (Mio€) LFS 19.0 112.9 4 waves per year 112.9 HBS 97.5 83.5 Every 5 years 16.7 SILC 55.0 29.8 Annual 29.8 HETUS 73.0 24.9 Every 10 years 2.5 EHIS 35.0 21.7 Every 5 years 4.3 AES 30.0 14.3 Every 5 years 2.9 HHICT 20.0 7.1 Annual 7.1 Total 294.1 176.2 Such data for other statistical domains do not exist on a systematic basis at Eurostat. It is therefore not possible to compare the costs of social surveys and other statistical costs. To contextualise these amounts, it is perhaps useful to note that the annualised costs corresponds to less than 5 per thousand of one percent (4.6 10-5) of the total social protection expenditure at EU level, and one per thousand of percent of the EU GDP.

On average, the cost of collecting information about one observation unit (a person or household) is around 100€, with substantial differences for the diary-based surveys and between countries. The bulk of the cost for all surveys corresponds to the data collection phase (where a large number of interviewers have to be mobilised for the traditional modes of face to face interview, be it on paper or with computer). 2.4.2.Defining the parameters for cost estimations The estimate in the previous paragraph forms the baseline scenario. However, the baseline scenario also consists of a number of parameters that directly influence the estimation of costs for each of the policy options in Chapter 6. Firstly, the types of costs that are relevant for analysis are listed below: •Cost of legislative action: it consists of the costs of legal procedures and discussions to prepare and approve a new legal document. This can be considered as negligible compared to the cost of statistical production and dissemination; •Cost of activities corresponding to the design phase of statistical operations: these include the preliminary studies for defining/testing new methodologies, the work of highly specialised staff in NSIs and Eurostat, the assessment of quality of new sources (if promoted), the development of IT tools to implement the modifications in the production and dissemination process, etc. They are estimated as 14% of the total cost according to the consultation with NSIs; •Costs of data collection: estimated at 65% of the total cost, they include salaries of interviewers, printing and sending questionnaires, telephone calls, etc., depending on the modes of collection used; •Costs of data treatment and dissemination: estimated at 22% of the total cost, they require the use of IT tools (software and hardware) and specialised staff. Survey Design (in % of the total cost) Data collection (in % of the total cost) Data treatment and dissemination (in % of the total cost) HETUS 14.7 63.1 22.2 HBS 10.6 69.6 19.8 SILC 11.6 64.3 24.1 AES 16.9 58.2 24.9 LFS 9.8 72.6 17.7 EHIS 15.7 65.0 20.0 HHICT 16.7 58.3 26.3 Average 13.6 64.5 22.1 2.4.3.Potential for costs reduction The structure of the surveys costs in table 2 shows clearly that the margins for efficiency gains are larger in the data collection and the field work, as they are the most resource intensive. The following elements of the envisaged measures have been identified as having a significant potential to reduce these costs for NISs: -The replacement of variables collected from the respondents by administrative records. It could not be quantified in terms of cost (the replacement requires carrying out preliminary studies, quality checks of the administrative data, modification of data entry, validation, processing and dissemination tools). However, the consultation to NSIs asked for current intentions to replace survey by administrative data for the social surveys, showing that there is margin for an increased use and therefore response burden reduction. NSIs intentions are going in that direction and are documented in the consultation report. -The use of new forms of interviewing the respondent, in particular the web-interviews. Several NSIs are in the exploratory phases needed to assess the feasibility and the resulting quality of these techniques. No consolidated assessment of the burden reduction exists, but a realistic order of magnitude would consider that if 30% of the respondents accept to answer by web interview, the data collection costs could be reduced by 20%. -The integration of the methods and concepts used in all the social surveys can allow Member States to have a global design of their national systems. It is heavily required by some stakeholders in the data producers' consultation. -The unification of the data collection planning, the transmission standards, the quality requirements, the sampling frame and quality reporting requirements would also allow to streamline the relevant national processes and make them more efficient. -The integration of the national (and Eurostat) production systems, currently hampered by the fragmentation of the legal basis, could allow the use of closer production processes across surveys, and in the best case, across countries, as productions methods and tools could become more similar. -The reduction of size of the questionnaires as well as the reduction of frequency of data collection will have a direct positive impact on costs. -More advanced techniques, currently under development, based on modularisation of social surveys leading to reduced sample size could also improve the cost side. An experimental simulation of the costs gains made by Eurostat showed a potential of 15% of the data collection costs.

It has to be kept in mind that innovation and changes would decrease the cost of the data collection phase, but may increase the initial one-off costs of the re-design phase, where the possibilities of use and the quality of the new approaches have to be checked by NSIs. At this stage, the quantification of impacts are built on the baseline scenario due to the lack of existing harmonised and comprehensive data in the Member States and to the difficulties mentioned by the stakeholders to assess precisely the future costs in the various scenarios (see further explanations in annex 4). Therefore, two approaches have been followed. The first one is to make a model based exercise, developed under the paragraph 6.2.5. The second approach is to reinforce the collection of monitoring and evaluation data, as developed under the part 8 of this report. 2.4.4.Burden on respondents In most cases, the burden on respondents (the individuals, members of a household) is captured already in the overall figures presented in table 1. It is described in the data producers’ consultation report. This burden can be significant, in particular for surveys involving a diary, for example, the time use survey or the consumption survey. However, one should bear in mind that a very small fraction of the population is subject to this burden and that this burden has overall a very limited economic impact. What is however more relevant is that the burden of answering questionnaires impacts the response rates that are currently decreasing. This hampers the data quality and increases the costs as more people have to be contacted. It is a general phenomenon, seen in many countries. The role of the EU in that context is to contribute to good design of surveys as well as questionnaires in some cases, and to promote exchange of practices. 2.5.Conclusion This chapter has set out the relation between the problem drivers and the problems that were found for social statistics. Below we summarise this relation in the form of a problem tree. As this chapter has shown, the problem drivers do not contribute to the identified problems in an isolated way. These drivers work together and are also influenced themselves by a number of relevant contextual factors. Despite the relevance of such contextual factors, these are not easily addressed by legislation, and should therefore be analytically distinguished from problem drivers. The most relevant are summarised below: •Increasing new data needs and expectations; •Availability of new data sources; •Pressures on resources (cost and response burden); •Innovations in methodology and IT.



3.Why the EU should act The Treaty for the Functioning of the European Union includes the explicit competence for the EU to adopt measures for the production of statistics where necessary for the performance of the activities of the Union (article 338 TFEU). The various Regulations for each of the surveys list in detail how and to what extent the data collection contributes to the Union activities. The legal basis for social statistics is further implemented by the Statistical law (Regulation 223/2009). TFEU 338(2) further requires that “the production of Union statistics shall conform to impartiality, reliability, objectivity, scientific independence, cost-effectiveness and statistical confidentiality; it shall not entail excessive burdens on economic operators”. Usually, EU statistics are jointly produced by the Commission (Eurostat) and the Member States. Concepts, methods and characteristics of the data collection are decided and formalised in a legal act ensuring implementation of the common approach at national level. Data are then collected, processed and transmitted by Member States. The production of statistics that are (1) harmonised across Member States and (2) delivered according to EU needs cannot be achieved at the national level only as concepts, methods and other characteristics of the data collection like periodicity and timeliness would remain decided at national level. EU statistical production requires the implementation of a harmonised methodology and the definition of a common output and its characteristics to be delivered by the individual Member States, which can only be fully achieved by way of EU action. In order to ensure compliant provision of national data, a regulation is the most adapted type of EU action.



4.Policy objectives: what should be achieved

4.1.Objectives The challenge for addressing the problems outlined in section 2 of the report is to create a legislative environment for the European Social Surveys that will guarantee the quality of the data in the long run. The system of European social surveys must be sufficiently robust and maintain a high quality in an environment characterised by rapid innovation of methodology and IT, the availability of new data sources, changing needs and expectations of data users and continued pressure on available resources. Objectives link the analysis of the problem to the options for the policy response. General objectives have been defined to target the identified problems as presented in the figure below. . In an impact assessment context, it is crucial that specific objectives are broad enough to allow consideration of all relevant policy alternatives without prejudging a particular solution. The figure above lists the specific objectives, based on the identified problems in chapter 2. The specific objectives aim to address the current stovepipe nature of social statistics (first problem driver) by enabling the integration of the different domains so as to improve responsiveness to new multidimensional data requirements, while reducing and limiting costs. They also aim to tackle the legal inflexibility of data collections (second problem driver) by considering a common framework for the different surveys that would allow improving data quality, facilitating the use of new methods and sources, as well as flexibility concerning the adoption of the technical aspects of the surveys. The selection of policy options that will be defined in the next chapters determines the shape of the operational objectives. These are analysed in chapters 5-7 and are therefore not yet included. All these policy options will be assessed on their contribution to these specific objectives 4.2.Coherence of objectives with other EU policies On a general level, the initiative is in line with EU policy: •The political priorities of the Commission, in particular the priorities dealing with job and growth, the digital market, the fairer dimension of the EMU, the migration, for which good analytical and monitoring tools are necessary for policy formulation and evaluation, encompassing at the same time several domains of social and economic statistics, creating the need for more coherence between data sources. •The Europe 2020 Strategy calls for indicators in order to monitor headline targets, such as promoting employment, improving education levels and promoting social inclusion through the reduction of poverty. The calculation of these indicators requires timely statistical input that should be produced as efficiently as possible in the context of modern statistical data collection and production. The current lack of cross-domain integration hampers the common analysis of data from existing data collections. •The Commission’s initiative on better regulation emphasises that the evaluation of EU policies will lead to an increasing need for targeted data (Commission Communication ‘Strengthening the foundations of Smart Regulation – improving evaluation’ COM(2013) 686). •The initiative is part of the REFIT programme which aims to ensure that EU legislation remains fit for purpose and delivers the results intended by EU law makers. In the context of REFIT, the initiative aims to minimise the burden of data collection and data production while ensuring that current and future needs for European statistics are met. • •Current EU legislation on statistics relating to persons and households has been regularly reviewed over the past years, the relevant evaluation reports are available from: http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/quality/domain-specific-results (under "population and social conditions"). The policy objectives described above provide the framework for solving the problems defined in this impact assessment, and are also coherently shared with a number of policy documents in the field of social statistics. Below, there are a number of reference documents, each of which defines a coherent set of principles or priority areas to specifically guide Eurostat and the Member States in the modernisation of European social statistics: •The Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament and the Council on the Production Method of EU Statistics: a Vision for the Next Decade (COM (2009) 404) states that a new generation of statistical legal acts would deal with broader areas of statistics and emphasises the increasing use of multiple data sources and innovative data collection methods, as well as the growing importance of cross-domain integration and concepts. •The Joint ESS Strategy for the implementation of the Commission Communication on the production method for EU statistics adopted by the ESSC on 20th May 2010;

•The Wiesbaden Memorandum adopted by the European Statistical System Committee (ESSC) on the 28th of September 2011. A new conceptual design for household and social statistics demands that the core social surveys providing data (including microdata) on persons and households should be streamlined, that additional and less frequent micro-data collections should complement the core social surveys and that better access to administrative data, the re-use of existing and access to new data sources, should be developed at national and EU level. •The paper on The Modernisation of Social statistics is intended as a comprehensive strategy document and roadmap for the modernisation of social statistics during the period 2012-2017. •The European Statistical Programme 2013-2017 (Regulation (EU) No 99/2013) identifies statistics on People’s Europe’ (i.e. social statistics) is one of the three pillars of the statistical information system. Each of the pillars covers a set of primary statistics that will provide the input for policy indicators and accounting systems. In order to reach the objectives of the European Statistical Programme 2013-2017 in the most efficient and consistent manner, Eurostat has launched the project aimed to establish a cross-cutting legal framework for the production of European statistics relating to persons and households and based on data at each individual level.



5.Policy options: what are the various options to achieve the objectives 5.1.Background In response to the problems defined and objectives set, two strands of policy options are proposed. Each of these strands introduces a variety of policy options that develop solutions for the problem drivers defined in Chapter 2 in different ways. The following strands for policy options are defined: • Addressing the domain fragmentation of social statistics • Addressing the flexibility of data collection on persons and households These strands will be described in the next paragraphs. Subsequently, for each of the policy options identified it will be explicitly described how the option corresponds to the core problems, and how these impact the key stakeholders in chapter 6. Chapter 7 will recombine the most appropriate options so as to shortlist the most appropriate solutions. 5.2.Addressing the domain fragmentation of social statistics Under this strand, four policy options have been considered, each of which addresses domain fragmentation to a different extent. The two key elements targeted by these policy options are (1) the legal context in the EU, which currently consists of various domain-specific regulations and agreements, and (2) the ‘stovepipe’ design of social statistics production. While these two elements are related, these are not the same, as also confirmed by a majority of NSIs. For this reason, these cannot be addressed by unidimensional policy options. Integrated EU legislative instruments for the various domains do not necessarily have to remove the ‘stovepipe’ model of data production to address the main problems identified in chapter 3. To save the considerable costs of changing national data production processes, an integrated legislative instrument could allow MS to produce data ‘in parallel’ and still improve the responsiveness, quality, possibility for innovation and costs of social data collection. At the same time, reducing the fragmentation of production processes could also take place without integrating legislation. In fact, progress in standardising statistical concepts across data collection has been made even under the current domain-specific legal set-up (e.g. definition of few “core social variables” to be included in different social surveys), however with mixed success so far. Data users also indicated in the consultation that “the final outcome of revising the ESS should not become the legal act per se, but it should create a path and ease the way towards improved European social statistics”. Given the importance of this distinction for key stakeholders, specific policy options have been defined that take this view into account. The table below presents the main policy options. Separate production processes ←−−−−→ Defragmentation of production processes Domain-specific legal instruments ↑ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ ↓ Integration of legal instruments 1.0 (Baseline): Separate production processes (‘stovepipes’), no integration of existing legislation 1.1: Defragmentation of production processes, no integration of existing legislation 1.2: Separate production processes (‘stovepipes’), but integration of existing legislation 1.3a: Defragmentation of production processes, integration of existing legislation 1.3b: Defragmentation of production processes, integration of social statistics governance



Comparing the options in more detail: Option Description 1.0 (Baseline): Separate production processes (‘stovepipes’), no integration of existing legislation Keep present-day legal structure with domain-specific Regulations at the EU level, and fragmentation (different guidelines, procedures and customs) among production processes 1.1 Defragmentation of production processes, no integration of existing legislation Keep domain-specific Regulations at the EU level, but pursue increased standardisation of the various production processes, definitions, and variables (‘defragmentation’) across data collections 1.2 Separate production processes (stovepipes), but integration of existing legislation Integrate legislation for social statistics, without actively pursuing ‘defragmentation’ of production processes 1.3 Defragmentation of production processes, and legal integration Combine legal integration with defragmentation of production processes. This option has sub-options, characterised by their difference in scope and governance of the whole system. 1.3a Defragmentation of production processes, integration of existing legislation Only includes the 5 current regulations (LFS, SILC, AES, EHIS and ICT-HH). 1.3b Defragmentation of production processes, integration of social statistics governance HBS / HETUS data collections included in the Regulation. Currently existing differences between Member States implicate that substantial harmonisation is required. 5.3.Addressing rigidity of data collection

The second strand of policy options included in the impact assessment focuses on the flexibility of data collection. A relevant distinction under this heading is the legal provisions on the programmatic elements (“what type of main data should be collected, at which frequency, about whom and with which level of accuracy”) and on various technical elements (“how should data be specified and transmitted"). The policy options considered in the impact assessment each add a certain element of flexibility to the existing legal provisions. A distinction between flexibility on substantive and technical elements is particularly relevant, as this determines which actors makes the changes. As such, these contribute to different types of impacts. The table below presents the main policy options. Technical aspects Fixed ←−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−→Flexible Program-ming Fixed ↑ │ │ ↓ Flexible 2.0: (Baseline): Programme and technicalities fixed in legislation 2.1: Fixed programming / flexible technical specifications 2.2: Flexible programming / flexible technical specifications Comparing the options in more detail: Option Description 2.0 Baseline: Programme and technicalities fixed in legislation Changes to programme or technical elements require changes in legal instruments 2.1 Fixed programming / flexible technical specifications Statistical programming set by Parliament / Council, technical elements more flexible to change 2.2 Flexible programming / flexible technical specifications Statistical programming and technical elements amenable to change



6.Analysis of impacts: What are the policy impacts of the different policy options and who will be affected 6.1.Introduction A detailed impact assessment has been conducted for each of the policy options presented in the previous chapter. First, the impact of each of the policy options will be assessed towards achieving the overall objectives. The following key impacts have been defined based on the objectives of the proposal. •Better responsiveness to societal needs •Ability to ensure quality of social statistics •Promoting the use of innovative methods and procedures In addition, the impact of each policy option on the costs of the production of social statistics has been assessed. This assessment allows conclusions to be drawn regarding the extent of how the policy options cost-efficiently contribute to the objectives. Finally, the impacts of the policy on specific stakeholders have been assessed, for which we have identified the following types of stakeholders: •Users of social statistics •Producers of social statistics •Respondents involved in social statistics data collection (individuals, households). In addition to the direct impacts of the policy options on stakeholders in this chapter, the next chapter will analyse the more indirect impacts associated with the shortlisted policy options. 6.2.Assessing impacts: addressing domain fragmentation This section explores the impacts of the policy options that address domain fragmentation.

6.2.1.Baseline (option 1.0): no additional action Under the baseline scenario, domain-specific legal instruments are in place at the EU level, while Member States and Eurostat follow different guidelines, procedures and methods for the production of the separate data collections. As a result, Member States continue to collect and process statistical data for each of the domains independently and in parallel (stovepipe design). As being a status quo, and having limited potential for addressing the key drivers, this option is rapidly examined. Effectiveness The continuation of the status quo limits the responsiveness of data collection to societal needs. As a result, the system of social statistics would not be able to respond to a growing demand of such issues. Eurostat also faces limitations in ensuring the quality of statistical data. Many changes to improve the quality require the full legislative procedures for each domain-specific Regulation. Most NSIs also consider that a continued fragmentation of data collection / handling processes contribute to the high risk of divergence in methods, and consequently the increase of incoherence across data collections and between countries. The same limitations are also relevant to the development of innovative tools. The domain-specific Regulations, further strengthened by fragmented production processes, do not facilitate the development of combined data collection methods, or the systematic use of alternative sources such as administrative registers. Efficiency / impacts on stakeholders The combination of domain-specific Regulations and fragmented production processes contributes to increasing inefficiencies in the data collection of social statistics. The status quo is "counter-innovative", as changes are lengthy and would keep the various inefficiencies in data collection in place. There would be no additional costs for NSIs in the status quo, but the possibilities to affront inefficiencies would be limited 6.2.2.Policy option 1.1: No change EU legislation, ‘defragment’ production processes across data collections The first policy alternative addresses the fragmented data collection on persons and households by Member States. In addition to the already existing efforts (see baseline scenario), this policy option would introduce additional (possibly legal) measures to reduce the fragmentation (“defragment”) of the national production processes of social statistics. It would do so by pursuing increased standardisation of the various production processes, definitions, and variables. This would help in reducing the overlaps in data. All of this is done however, without changing the current legal structure at EU level, with domain-specific Regulations. Whilst the analysis of this policy option does not actually address the policy objectives, and even could worsen the situation, it is an option that some stakeholders could consider valid, from a user perspective. Data producers may also see it as an acceptable solution. However, it is likely to maintain the status quo. It is therefore useful to analyse rapidly this option and not discard it upfront. Effectiveness Data users in the consultation phase indicated that possible changes due to defragmentation of national data production processes would in theory allow Member States to better respond to user demands for cross-domain issues, such as well-being (a complex combination of living conditions, income, labour status, health, etc.). However, due to the need to amend the domain specific regulations and the voluntary agreements, this option has considerable limits in responsiveness to societal needs at the EU level. This policy option therefore, negatively impacts the responsiveness of social statistics to societal needs. Because of the persisting legal fragmentation, any introduction of uniform standards for social statistics would require Eurostat to amend each of the domain-specific Regulations at the same time. It would involve costs and an important risk of not achieving the objectives, as divergences might remain in the course of the technical and legal developments. This policy option does not solve the problem of quality control on cross-domain data collection, which is likely to become even more relevant in the future (see problem definition). This risk is also underlined by data users, who fear that the lack of integrated EU legislation on social data collection could lead to lower quality and reduced interest for some specific sub-domains (e.g. health). Policy option 1.1 opens up possibilities for Member States to use and combine new / innovative methods for data collection or production. Efficiency / impacts for stakeholders

The measures proposed under policy option 1.1 have a positive impact on the long-term development of production costs of social statistics. Over the short-term however, NSIs indicated that the actions to reduce fragmentation, such as increasing standardisation of processes, variables, or definitions do not reduce costs, but instead create significantly higher costs for their institutions. In particular, the implementation of new processes and methods, or the possible changes in definitions, variables or guidelines are considered costly. For instance, the assessment of the quality of administrative registers before their use for the production of statistics may represent a high initial cost. NSIs reported that such implementation costs would be considerably higher in the short-term than the potential gains. At the same time, the lack of integration of the domain-specific regulations at EU level poses some other efficiency issues. This Member States' led integration will require substantial monitoring activity at Eurostat level, as risks of divergences between Member States will by high. This creates considerable costs for the European political and legislative system and monitoring and compliance assessment costs. Finally, the risk of divergences between separated EU legal acts is high. This option could end up in a situation that is not very different from the status quo. In addition, its acceptability by Member States will be difficult. Impact of the policy option 1.1 on the core problems Lack of responsiveness Remains a problem (=): any changes to content of data collection face slow formal legal procedures Quality issues Slightly better than baseline (+): quality better ensured for existing data collections, not for cross-domain data collections Hampered use of innovative methods Improvement (+): common data production procedures allow NSI to benefit from synergies across data collections, provided no divergence between legal acts appear Inability to reduce costs Slight improvement, but high implementation costs (+/-): Costs reduced over the long term, but remain considerable in the short term. Legislative procedures also remain burdensome due to fragmented legislation. 6.2.3.Policy option 1.2: Integrate EU legislation, no change in the fragmentation of production processes The second policy alternative is the symmetric of policy option 1.1. It includes the legislative package to create an integrated legislative framework for all data collections on persons and households in the ESS. As such, it would replace the separate domain-specific Regulations currently in place and streamline decision-making at EU level to respond to new data challenges. At the same time, this policy alternative does not include additional efforts to defragment the national production environments for social statistics through common principles. Consequently, the production processes at Member State level may continue to be organised by different domains. Effectiveness An integrated legal framework for social statistics would facilitate a better responsiveness of social statistics to societal needs. Changing needs for social statistics or additional cross-domain modules in existing data collections (consider for instance including elements on disability statistics, migration statistics, vulnerable groups) can be added relatively easily by amending one overarching legislative instrument, thus increasing responsiveness to new data needs. When doing so, it is crucial that possible legal reforms ensure the continuity of time series. Legal integration would improve the position of Eurostat in the management and governance of the social statistical system. It allows Eurostat to respond to new challenges with uniform (legal) measures, which would implement or repeal legal provisions for the entire social domain at once, instead of for each Regulation separately. This puts Eurostat in a better position to ensure the quality of collected data in terms of comparability and coherence. While changes to the legal structure can be more efficiently implemented at the European level, a sufficient number of checks-and-balances would need to be in place to sufficiently address NSI’s and users’ concerns, in relation to continuity of data provision. For stakeholders a continued focus on outputs remains of the highest importance. Due to the persistence of domain-specific production processes, these checks and balances also need to follow this structure, thus undoing some of the efficiency benefits of legal integration. The integration of the various domain-specific Regulations impacts the possibilities to introduce innovative methods into law, and as such, also has indirect impacts on the efficiency of data collection. Again, the persistence of fragmented processes and data collections at the level of some Member States could undo much of the possible positive impacts. Efficiency/impact on stakeholders This policy option streamlines the legislative structure of European social statistics and thereby, contributes to a reduction of costs to change existing programming (necessary changes can be implemented more cost-efficiently at the EU level; instead of changing five domain-specific Regulations and opening up two informal agreements, one amendment procedure would suffice). Despite this increasing potential for efficiency, the continued fragmentation at the national level also means a continuation of the existing stovepipe model in the Member States. This could explain why NSIs reported that an integrated legislation would decrease the cost of data collection for 11/28 countries, while 8 Member States expect increases in costs. As a result, this policy option would bring efficiency gains for the European legislative process, but not considerably improve the efficiency of data production processes by NSIs. The resulting impacts for data users are twofold. This policy option limits the possibilities to meet the increasing user demand for cross-domain data collection on social issues at the EU level, due to persisting domain-specific data production. At the same time, those demands that fall within specific domains can be met more efficiently, as these can be introduced into integrated legislative packages that extend to the entire social statistics domain at once. In theory, this policy option leaves overlaps and unnecessary redundancies in data collection in place, which would keep higher costs for data producers. However, in the consultation, most NSIs indicated a preference for limited implementation costs of this policy option, even in light of continued inefficiencies in the long run. An integration of the legislative system, without changes in the requirements on national data collections, various production processes or quality criteria is the preferred option for a majority of NSIs. Impact of policy option 1.2 on the core problems Lack of responsiveness Improvement (++): changes to the contents of data collection (also cross-domain) rapidly adopted in unified act Quality issues Slightly better than baseline (+): improved management and governance at EU level; uniform quality standards need to be applied to each specific production process Hampered use of innovative methods Slightly better than baseline (+): legally possible to encourage innovation, but limited potential due to separate production processes Inability to reduce costs Improvement, limited efficiency gains on long term (+ /=): Costs for legislative procedures considerably reduced. Relatively low implementation costs, but limited efficiency gains over the long term. 6.2.4.Policy option 1.3a: Integrate existing Regulations, ‘defragment’ production processes The third policy alternative combines the elements of the first and the second options. It integrates the existing statistical EU legislation for social statistics into a common coherent framework, by repealing the existing domain-specific Regulations and replacing these with an integrated legislative package. In addition, it introduces the measures to reduce the fragmentation of the production processes at the Member State level, for data collections that are currently regulated by law. For data collections that are currently not regulated by law, Eurostat would encourage Member States to integrate their data collections. Legal and soft measures facilitating the removal of the ‘stovepipes’ in the business processes of national statistical institutes in combination with coherent cross-domain statistical legislation for social statistics offers the most comprehensive consolidation and integration of the production of social data in the European statistical system.

Effectiveness The combination of integration of EU legislation on social statistics with measures to allow a reduction of the fragmentation of data collection and production processes contributes to a higher responsiveness to societal needs. This responds well to the flexibility needs defined by the policy users in the consultation. The effectiveness to ensure the quality of data collection also increases under policy option 1.3a. An integrated legislative instrument helps Eurostat in promoting the consistency of statistical output across different domains and data collections, like the quality reporting framework or the need for good sample frames. It also helps in dealing effectively with possible newly arising quality concerns that could come from innovative approaches, like the use of new data sources. At the same time, the reduction of fragmentation of data production processes offers more options to ensure the quality of data as well. A reduction of fragmentation in data production processes creates incentives for Member States to use and combine alternative data sources and methods across various domains. This is further helped by integrated legislation at the EU level. This could for instance, contribute to an increasing use of administrative registers as input for social statistics, that would be supported at EU level. Such a focus would not only reduce the cost of data collection but also contribute to a reduction of response burden of respondents. Efficiency / Impacts on stakeholders The efficiency gains to be made by integrating social statistical legislation into an overarching legislative instrument in place of the currently existing domain-specific Regulations, are procedural in nature, but are also substantial. Streamlining the process of changing requirements under one legislative instrument would lead to considerable efficiency gains on the side of individual NSIs and Eurostat. Due to the possibilities to reduce overlaps in data collections and combine survey data with other sources (such as administrative registers), efficiency gains can also be expected on the response burden on persons and households that contribute to the data collections. The combination of legal integration and reduction of fragmentation of production processes contributes to potential efficiency gains at the European level. This could allow for a better integration and a more flexible design of survey instruments, as social survey variables can be grouped into thematic fields (“modules”). This has been successfully introduced already in LFS and tested in a “laboratory experiment”, where lower costs and increased possibilities for cross-tabulation of variables were achieved. To assess the efficiency of the proposed policy option in more detail, NSIs were asked to indicate their expectations for the development of costs for data collection in an environment with integrated legislation and defragmented production processes. It is noted that the question of expected cost developments for NSIs is complicated, because it cannot be seen separate from the (expected) needs of NSI’s national users (such as national policymakers). The main concerns are related to the expected costs for the collection of data, as these constitute roughly 65% of the total costs made by NSIs. As such, these easily outweigh other costs, such as design (roughly 13%) or processing, dissemination and transmission of data (roughly 22% of the costs). A majority of NSIs expect lower or at least similar costs for data collection in the medium-term. However, it is not possible to evaluate the cumulated impact on costs of the different modernisation initiatives, such as combined methodological work, inter-institutional collaboration and IT developments. Despite these efficiency gains at the system level for the collection of data, NSIs point out the risk of significant one-off cost increases in the short-term. This is mainly due to various requirements on standardising quality criteria, technical definitions and statistical qualifications, related to the defragmentation of production processes and legal integration. The costs for these changes are a potential burden for NSIs, who have no choice but to revise their procedures and data collection methods to reflect new requirements, if codified in law. As a result, NSIs are hesitant towards legislative instruments involving integration, if accompanied with the need for far-reaching overhaul of their own procedures. Related to this, various NSIs and data users also point to the importance of continuity of data series, and possible risk of disruption. As continuity of data series is as important for Eurostat, the NSIs and data users, it is assumed that this policy option remains within the parameters to ensure continuity of data series. Over the medium-term (5 to 10 years), 18 out of the 28 NSIs are of the opinion that an integrated legislation would increase the one-off costs in the re-design phase, and 13 out of 28 NSIs fear increased costs for the treatment and transmission of data. However, it is noted here that the types of costs expected by the NSIs are generally in the form of investments (design of IT tools, questionnaires, training materials, etc.) which could be recovered with repetitions of data collection operations. In addition and as already mentioned above, the costs for design or transmission are relatively minor in comparison to the costs of collection of data. Only a minor cost-saving in data collection has the potential to outweigh considerable one-time cost increases in the design or transmission. The box below provides a model of those costs to underline this issue. Modelling implementation costs against the benefits in data collection Even though there are severe limitations to estimating the impacts on costs of data collection, this box contains a modelling example to compare the one-off short-term costs of implementation of a new data design against the longer-term benefits of more efficient data collection. Four scenarios are presented; the first three scenarios refer to the option 1.3b, developed below under 6.2.5, and include all the seven existing surveys. The scenario 4 relates to the option 1.3a, where only the five currently regulated surveys are considered. In order to make the scenarios comparable, costs related to non-yearly surveys have been annualised. All amounts are presented in present values, with a discount rate of 4%.The ratio of variation in costs of the design and data collection phases (1 to 5) is based on the relative average proportions of cost declared by the NSIs (13% to 65%), as shown in table 2..•The estimates for NSIs that could not provide data are based on that of the countries with the most similar population size. 1)For this, we introduce first the following conservative model, based on the following assumptions: Increase of one-off design costs of 20% in the “redesign period” defined as the first 2 years of low frequency surveys (AES, EHIS, HBS, HETUS), in the first year of higher frequency surveys (HHICT, LFS, SILC). These re-design costs include the technical preparation of surveys such as studying and evaluating existing experiences, preparing new data collection tools (questionnaires, data entry applications, data validation rules, tabulation plans, etc.), testing them, training the staff (interviewers, statisticians), preparing the public communication and legal background (e.g. consulting with the National Statistical Council), etc. Decrease of cost in data collection – with the assumption of no increase in sample size - of 5% for 3 years for HBS, 7 years for HETUS, 2 years for AES and EHIS and 1 year for HHICT, LFS and SILC. The gains in efficiency may be due to using more administrative data, moving from traditional face-to-face to telephone or web interviews, automatizing the data transmission, etc. These assumptions, and the input received from NSIs (see section 3.4), result in an increase in costs of €10.3 million in the redesign period of the whole set of surveys (at EU level), while leading to a decrease of €20.8 million in the data collection during the years of implementation, resulting in a net present value of €-10.4 million 2)With the same expected duration of the increase and reduction of costs, a similar calculation with more contained design costs (10%) and more modest decreases in data collection costs (2%) would bring costs of €5.2 million in the design phase, compared to €8.3 million of economies in data collection, resulting in a net present value of €-3.1 million. 3)A less conservative model assuming longer periods of economies in data collection (6 years for AES and EHIS, 7 years for HBS and HETUS and 3 years for annual surveys) would give a total decrease in collection costs of 44.4 million compared to a design investment of 10.3 million, giving a net present value of €-34 million. In these three cases, roughly half of the variation in cost of design and data collection is due to HBS and HETUS. In fact, HBS is already carried out in all Member States and HETUS in a large number of them. An increase of design cost of 20% may be an over-estimation and therefore gains could be under-estimated. 4)In the case where HBS and HETUS are not considered in the integrated legislative instrument (policy option 1.3a) and under the assumption of the scenario 1, the respective variation in costs would amount to a € 5.4 million cost increase in the design phase and a € 7.5 million cost decrease in the collection phase giving a net present value of €-2 million. Data users point primarily towards the possibilities related to a combined integration and defragmentation. Users strongly adhere to national actions to defragment existing production processes (‘stovepipes’) and various types of data users assigned a high priority to such actions. Impact of the policy option 1.3a on the core problems Lack of responsiveness Improvement (++): newly arising (cross-domain) issues can better be included in legislation and practice Quality issues Improvement (++): quality better ensured for existing data collections, future cross-domain data collections, and innovative methods of data collection Hampered use of innovative methods Improvement (++): common data production processes allow NSI benefit from synergies across data collections, integrated legislation increases visibility to promote new methods. Inability to reduce costs Improvement, but high implementation costs (++/-): Costs for data collection and legislative amendments reduced on the long term, but short-term costs involved with implementation 6.2.5.Policy option 1.3b: Integrate social statistics governance in combination with defragmentation of national processes across data collections When considering the integration of domain-specific Regulations at the EU level it is possible to include the current data collections that are currently not governed by law as well. HBS / HETUS data collections which are currently run on a voluntary basis, i.e. governed by gentlemen’s agreements, would therefore be turned into legislation when integrating this with other data collections in social statistics. Due to the considerable differences in place in the various Member States, legal integration at the EU level alone is not sufficient, and should be accompanied by substantial harmonisation at the national level as well, as proposed in this policy option. For this reason, this policy option also assesses the impacts of expanding the scope to HBS / HETUS. Effectiveness

In terms of effectiveness, relatively similar impacts are relevant as for policy option 1.3a, except that these would now also be applicable for the HBS / HETUS data collections. However, this provides a number of additional impacts that are explored here. Policy option 1.3a showed a higher responsiveness to societal needs. This is even more so when including HBS / HETUS. Such fixed procedures would come in the place of the current less formal system that is also subject of detailed discussions. The codification into law increases the formal procedures, which replace the comparable informal coordination mechanism. Effectively, the responsiveness to societal needs would increase, as more domains would be covered, compared to option 1.3a. The quality of social statistics in the EU is ensured by the common implementation by 28 Member States of technical and substantial requirements on the collection of data. With legal provisions that cover on all surveys, these are all governed by a similar instrument to ensure the quality of social statistics. These potential gains in quality are found on top of the already defined quality improvements established for option 1.3a. Overall, the highest gains in ensuring quality are found for policy option 1.3b. The use of innovative methods and procedures is not limited by could be further supported when the legislation would also extend to HBS / HETUS. These two surveys in particular could benefit from innovation, as it can be foreseen that in the near future new data sources for consumption and time use wold become available, in particular from the use of new technologies. Efficiency / Impacts on stakeholders As already shown under policy option 1.3a, considerable efficiency gains can be made by integration, both for NSIs as for Eurostat. However, as the gains increase, so do the implementation costs, and this generates quite different costs for national data producers on the short term. Due to the informal governance character of HBS / HETUS, Member States have developed relatively different approaches in their data collection that require to be redesigned or at least adapted once these are brought under the broader legal framework. In fact, in the latest round of HETUS only 15 countries contribute