Data Integration and Record Matching: An Austrian Contribution to Research in Official Statistics

Data integration techniques are one of the core elements of
DIECOFIS, an EU-funded international research project that aims at
developing a methodology for the construction of a system of indicators on
competitiveness and fiscal impact on enterprise performance. Data
integration is also of major interest for official statistics agencies as a means
of using available information more efficiently and improving the quality of
the agency's products. The Austrian member of the project consortium
comprises university departments, representatives from the Bundesanstalt
Statistik Austria, from the Statistical Department of the Austrian Economic
Chamber, and from ec3, a non-profit research corporation. This paper gives
a short report on DIECOFIS in general and on the Austrian contribution to
the project, mainly dealing with data integration methodology. Various
papers that have been read at the DIECOFIS workshop last November in
Vienna, will be published as a Special Issue of the Austrian Journal of
Statistics.