Industrial Statistics Revisited: From Footnotes to Meta-Information Management

UNIDO maintains a long tradition in the compilation of international statistics on industrial production and, particularly, has developed a suite of tools and techniques for improving third-party data, mainly supplied directly or indirectly by National Statistics Offices, toenable and enhance both cross-country and long-term comparability. However, changing IT environments, socio-economic conditions, and customer requirements increasingly challenge established procedures and behaviors. After reviewing (i) the relevance of industrial statistics in general and that of international industrial statistics in particular for the industrial development in the macro economic framework, (ii) the importance of datacomparability on those statistics for accurate and objective analysis with regard to the industrial development, and (iii) UNIDO?s specific efforts in increasing cross-country data comparability, this paper discusses a proposal for an integrated data and data documentation framework aimed at (i) recording all measures taken by UNIDO and (ii) reporting on all residual inconsistencies and deficiencies adversely affecting data comparability and interpretation. The proposal is illustrated by a prototype implementationusing current UNIDO data.