most important challenges that we face are common to all statistical offices : globalisation, the it revolution and the constraint given by the statistical response burden of reporting agents. the recent financial turmoil highlights the impact of globalisation on the various areas of competence of central banks. it also illustrates the trade - off between the statistical response burden of reporting agents and a lack of consistent information to analyse the current economic and financial situation. in particular, there is a lack of sufficiently harmonised statistics to accurately measure the allocation of credit risk within the economy and the impact of cross - sector and cross - border credit risk transfers. another issue is the recording of contingent credit exposures. the it revolution will enable the statistical community to carry out the current procedures for collecting, compiling and disseminating statistics more efficiently. however, it is much more important to reflect on how the it revolution can be used to introduce new and more effective procedures. micro - databases are promising in this respect. they may also mitigate the constraints imposed by the statistical response burden of the reporting agents. moreover, micro - databases will enable statistics to be adjusted more flexibly to financial and other structural innovations, in many cases, almost in real time. it is equally important to bear in mind that the more important statistics are for policy purposes, the greater the need for statistical communication that explains facts and figures in real time to professional users and the public at large. the nobel laureate george stigler once said : “ the public has chosen to speak and vote on economic problems, so the only open question is how intelligently it speaks and votes ” ( george stigler, 1970 ). effective statistical communication plays an essential role in ensuring that this open question is answered satisfactorily and to the benefit of the entire society. the fourth ecb conference on statistics is coming to an end. i would like to thank you all very much for your participation and for your attention. i trust that the contributions and discussions will inspire further reflection on a strategic vision for statistics for the next ten years and possibly beyond.

csdb will also significantly enhance consistency among these statistics. this applies as well and with a higher degree of complexity to securities - holding information. all of these statistical enhancements require an even closer collaboration within the escb and, in particular, the eurosystem. the escb statistics committee is charged with this pioneering task. given the wide range of securities included in the csdb, this project has attracted attention at the international level, including that of the g8. however, first and foremost, it is important to demonstrate that the csdb is fit for use in the production of euro area statistics, where balance of payments statistics, including the international investment positions, and investment funds statistics have been identified as the highest priorities. in parallel, and in order to allow comparable and aggregated securities statistics on a global level in the future, the ecb also cooperates with the bank for international settlements ( bis ) and the international monetary fund ( imf ) by participating in the working group on securities databases towards the development of a handbook on securities statistics, which will focus initially on debt securities. in general, applying standard requirements to statistics may indeed be best dealt with by first agreeing on output tables, enshrining the tables in a legal act and afterwards collecting the related input data from reporting agents. however, this standard procedure typically does not cope with significant financial and structural innovations or with crisis situations. if necessary, the available set of statistics must be promptly and regularly updated in the face of rapid financial innovation and broader structural change. simultaneously, there is a need for sufficiently long time series without statistical breaks. this points to the opportunity of a more frequent and intensive recourse to micro - databases. micro - information, such as information on individual securities, individual loans or individual statistical units, such as household income and wealth surveys, may be aggregated in multiple ways to statistical outputs depending on the questions under consideration. this allows both a continuity of the standard statistics and a timely statistical response to new and unexpected policy issues. the use of micro - databases for statistical purposes is also becoming increasingly feasible thanks to the it revolution. at the same time, the effectiveness of micro - databases much depends on the quality of the micro - information available and their accessibility to statisticians. session 3 : future coordination and collaboration strategies in the area of statistics one of the assets of the statistical community is its close cooperation at the european level and worldwide. this significantly facilitates agreements on harmonised statistical concepts and methods, and accelerate