Remote Processing of Business Microdata at the Bank of Italy

Abstract

Providing the possibility to run personalised econometric/statistical analyses on the appropriate datasets by remote processing allows greater flexibility for applied economic research. Binding confidentiality requirements is required with business surveys. The Bank of Italy’s infrastructure BIRD pursues at the same time two seemingly conflicting aims: to allow researchers to explore and model business survey data, while preserving anonymity of individual information. The system is based on the Lissy platform (already adopted by the Luxembourg Income Study and other research centres). Firms’ data confidentiality is safeguarded by a number of means. We show synthetic data about the current utilisation of the platform and outline some major future developments aimed to improve service levels, as well as to maintain and improve its capability to attract qualified users.