1 Common Statement by Participating Institutions

The BIS, ECB, EUROSTAT, IMF, OECD, UN, and the World Bank have joined together to focus on business practices in the field of statistical information that would allow more efficient processes for exchange and sharing of data and metadata within the current scope of our collective activities.

The Sponsoring Institutions created common (SDMX) technical and statistical standards and guidelines, together with an IT architecture and IT tools, to be used for the efficient exchange and sharing of statistical data and metadata.

Standardised file formats for data and metadata and standardised contents of these files are the pre-condition for the automated production, processing and exchange of SDMX data and metadata files between national and international statistical organisations.

2 Message from the Chairperson

In taking over as chair of the SDMX Sponsors Committee for 2010-2011, I have the pleasure to inform you that the SDMX initiative is delivering more and more sophisticated technical and statistical standards to be used for the efficient data and metadata exchange based on mainstream technology. Collaborative efforts among a growing SDMX community of institutions and experts around the world have focused on advances in

• the SDMX technical standards;
• the SDMX Content-oriented Guidelines standardising data and metadata messages across statistical domains;
• the SDMX IT tools and IT architectures.

More and more statistical domains in international and national statistical agencies are using and implementing the SDMX technical and statistical standards and guidelines. This also leads to improvement of the statistical business processes in international and national statistical institutions.

Over the next two years, the SDMX Sponsoring Institutions will concentrate their efforts

• to further improve the SDMX technical and statistical standards;
• to support the implementation of SDMX technical and statistical standards and guidelines in an increasing number of statistical domains and statistical institutions;
• to offer training and support for the use of SDMX in statistical organisations worldwide;
• to offer more free SDMX IT tools to the user community.

I firmly believe that the SDMX technical and statistical standards and guidelines provide efficient standardized solutions for the production and exchange of official statistics between national and international statistical systems at low maintenance costs. As in the past, the SDMX Sponsoring Institutions encourage all interested parties at international and national level to contribute actively to the realisation of this vision by participating in the further development of the SDMX standards and guidelines as well as to its active implementation.

Shaida BADIEE
Chair of the SDMX Sponsors Committee

3 Sponsors

	Bank for International Settlements (BIS) Paul Van den Bergh Head of Information, Statistics and Administration Monetary and Economic Department Postfach Bank for International Settlements CH-4002 Basel, Switzerland
	Eurostat (the Statistical Office of the European Union) Michel Glaude Director Directorate B, Quality, Methodology and Information Systems Bâtiment Bech, 5, rue Alphonse Weicker L-2721 Luxembourg E-mail: estat-sdmx@ec.europa.eu
	Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Martine Durand Chief Statistician OECD 2, rue André Pascal F-75775 Paris Cedex 16 France
	European Central Bank (ECB) Werner Bier Director General Statistics (acting) European Central Bank Postfach 16 03 19 D-60066 Frankfurt am Main Germany E-mail: sis.external@ecb.int
	International Monetary Fund (IMF) Adelheid Burgi-Schmelz Director Statistics Department International Monetary Fund 700 19th Street, N.W. Washington, DC 20431
	United Nations (UN) Paul Cheung Director Statistics Division United Nations New York, NY 10017
	The World Bank Group (WB) Shaida Badiee Director Development Data Group 1818 H Street, NW Washington, DC 20433 E-mail: data@worldbank.org

4 History

The heads of the statistics organizations sponsoring the Statistical Data and Metadata Exchange (SDMX) initiative met on June 14, 2002 to agree on concrete projects that will advance their joint initiative. The institutions and their respective constituencies favor open and effective international cooperation in maintaining and if necessary developing new e-standards for their data exchanges. New standards should take advantage of the new web-based technologies and the expertise of those working on the business requirements and IT support for the collection, compilation, and dissemination of statistical information. Four projects, three of which bring ‘under the SDMX umbrella” work that is already ongoing in several institutions, have been proposed and agreed in online, and work on them is planned to move forward immediately.

• A practical case study on emerging e-standards for data exchange
• Maintaining and advancing existing standards for time series data exchange
• Creation of a common vocabulary for statistical metadata
• Development of a framework for metadata repositories

Related documents
	Report on Common Open Standards for the Exchange and Sharing of Socio-economic Data and Metadata: the SDMX Initiative (March 1, 2003)
	Common Open standards for the Exchange and Sharing of Socio-economic Data and Metadata: the SDMX Initiative (March 8, 2002)
	Report of the International Monetary Fund on Common Open standards for the Exchange and Sharing of Socio-economic Data and Metadata: the SDMX Initiative (Background document, March 1, 2002)
	SDMX: Moving Forward