A Statistical Business Register spine as a new approach to support data integration and firm-level data linking: An ABS perspective

Abstract

Statistical Business Registers (SBR) have historically underpinned the compilation of economic statistics by providing consistent unit structures and classifications for survey frame production and business demography data. To meet emerging data needs for both regular statistical production releases and for specific questions asked by policy makers, the SBR can also be used as a data integrating framework. This paper outlines the “spine” approach proposed by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) to support more flexible integration and linking of firm-level data that will also expand the uses of the SBR. The spine is the minimum set of information required to identify an entity and act as the linking variable(s) to other datasets. Its application involves a new approach to management of input datasets and can be applied across statistical registers. This paper will provide (1) a description of the ABS spine proposal for statistical registers; (2) benefits of a spine approach for both regular statistical production and new data solutions; and (3) an overview of how the ABS BLADE (Business Longitudinal Analysis Data Environment) is used to integrate firm-level datasets to enable policy evaluation and statistical research by analysts from government and academia.