Cross-governmental initiatives in Data collection in Sweden

Transcription

1 DATA COLLECTION SESSION E Cross-governmental initiatives in Data collection in Sweden Anna-Greta Erikson Statistics Sweden Johan Erikson Statistics Sweden

2 Cross-governmental initiatives in Data collection in Sweden Anna-Greta Erikson 1, Johan Erikson 2 There are several cross-governmental initiatives that will affect the data collection for statistics in Sweden in the near future. First and foremost, the government has initialised the building of an infrastructure to simplify the data provision for enterprises, with the final goal of one piece of information once, at one place. This includes several building bricks: a portal within the website verksamt.se from where enterprises will be able to access and fulfil all governmental data requests, a common solution for e-id logon and a common way to communicate data requests to enterprises through secure electronic means. All governmental agencies that collect data from enterprises are supposed to connect to this infrastructure in the next few years. Secondly, there are initiatives to progress with electronic data provision through standardised formats and machine to machine solutions, where XBRL (extensible Business Reporting Language) has now been named Swedish Standard. But for this format to be efficient in reducing response burden, there is also a need for collaboration between authorities requesting similar information. Together with the Tax Authority and the Swedish Companies Registration Office, Statistics Sweden has launched a project with the aim to make it possible for enterprises to reuse financial information and report it in XBRL to the three authorities. Key words: cross-governmental initiatives, e-id, XBRL 1. Introduction This paper describes on-going cross-governmental initiatives in Sweden that will affect data collection processes. 2. Background Lessening the response burden on enterprises in Sweden has been a political priority in Sweden for a number of years now. There was a pressure on all governmental authorities to lower the response burden by 25 per cent between 2007 and 2010, and at that time detailed measures were taken to follow up on the progress. By those measures, statistical data collection accounted for around one per cent of the total administrative burden on 1 Statistics Sweden, Senior Advisor, Örebro, Sweden, annagreta.erikson@scb.se 2 Statistics Sweden, Process Owner, Örebro, Sweden, johan.erikson@scb.se

3 enterprises, but it was one of the tasks that were considered most burdensome. From 2009, there have been mappings of most mandatory data requests from government authorities to businesses, covering the 14 authorities that are the largest data collectors. From these experiences, a new investigation started in 2012 and ended in 2015 called Minskat och förenklat uppgiftslämnande för företagen. Roughly translated, that means reduced and simplified supply of information for businesses. From the investigation, a number of suggestions have already been implemented. At the same time, initiatives have been taken by the government to make more use of the possible digitalisation of the interaction between governmental authorities on the one hand, and citizens and business on the other. Two important initiatives here are the introduction of a new solution for electronic identification called Svensk e-legitimation or Swedish e-id, and a means for authorities to communicate through secure electronic means through secure electronic means called Mina meddelanden or My messages. Together, these initiatives form a new infrastructure that authorities including Statistics Sweden have to adapt to. This paper describes the initiatives in more detail and how Statistics Sweden plan to adapt to them. Since Swedish e-id and My messages concern both citizens and businesses, we will start by those and then proceed to the parts that only cover businesses. The digitalisation of information and business processes also give new opportunities to collect data in new ways. There are initiatives to progress with electronic data provision through standardised formats and machine to machine solutions, where XBRL (extensible Business Reporting Language) has now been named Swedish Standard. But for this format to be efficient in reducing response burden, there is also a need for collaboration between authorities requesting similar information. Together with the Tax Authority and the Swedish Companies Registration Office, Statistics Sweden has launched a project with the aim to make it possible for enterprises to reuse financial information and report it in XBRL to the three authorities. In the second part of this paper, a report on how this work has progressed so far is given. 3. Electronic identification Many government authorities have offered electronic identification (e-id) as a means to access services and provide data. Up to now, there has not been a common solution to this, so all authorities have had to procure services from e-id service providers (who run services regarding authentication and authorization based on e-ids given to end users by e-id providers). Statistics Sweden have not been using e-ids, our logon system uses user IDs and passwords that we generate and distribute to users by mail (mainly paper but in some cases ). The Swedish government has initiated a new solution for e-ids that is a federative system, and has created a new authority, The Swedish E-identification Board (Elegitimationsnämnden) to handle this. The aim with the new Swedish e-id system from 2016 is to develop a more flexible situation in the field of e-identification. The new, federative architecture is based on the following:

4 Coordination and gradual development of the infrastructure New way to procure electronic identification services to meet legislative requirements the Board procures e-id services from providers, and authorities contract with the Board to get access to all service providers (this is why the solution is called federative). Introduction of a standardised identity assertion (using SAML 2) Introduction of local e-signing based on standardised identity assertion Consideration of the eidas regulation with the possibility to accept e-ids from other EU countries from The Swedish government is pushing for all authorities to join the new solution. Statistics Sweden has decided to introduce e-id authentication with this new federative solution and has an ongoing project to build a new log-in system that is to be used for all our e-services, whether it is data collection or other services that we offer that need log-in to use them. The new system will be called Styx, and it will offer authentication and authorisation by e-id but also by user-id and password. One problem with e-ids in Sweden at the moment is that they are for persons only. It is possible to connect a person to an enterprise through the authority to sign for the firm (there is a register on who has this authority for which enterprises at the Swedish Companies Registration Office) but in larger enterprises the respondents are normally not persons with this authority. For such a respondent to be able to log in with his or her e-id, an authorised person needs to register the respondent as a delegate for the enterprise. In the public sector, there is not even this possibility. Therefore, we have come to the conclusion that user-ids and passwords will have to be possible to use, albeit in a better and more secure manner than today. The main obstacle at the moment is that the new federative solution will not be in place in June 2016 as has previously been promised. The Board has had problems to get e-id service providers to join the new federation, and therefore an interim solution has been created that will handle the situation for those that already had an e-id solution in place. For Statistics Sweden however, this meant the situation has changed. To offer an e-id solution in the interim solution, we would either need to set up a different technical solution than the one we are building towards now (using the SAML 2 assertion) or make a procurement from one of the few suppliers that offer a SAML2 integration connected to the interim solution. We would also have to procure e-id services for authentication. Therefore it is at present somewhat unclear when Statistics Sweden can offer an e-id solution to respondents, but we hope to be able to procure and implement a solution to early Secure electronic communication Means for secure electronic communication between governmental authorities on the one hand and citizens and business on the other have been developed by the Swedish tax agency over the last few years. The system is called My messages (Mina meddelanden) and is built on citizens and businesses joining the solution and ordering a specific electronic mailbox for communication from authorities, and a register of addresses to those that have joined that can be used by authorities who join on their side to send secure electronic messages. At the moment there are three possible mailboxes to choose from; one governmental and two privately operated; and a third private one is on its way onto the market. These are web mailboxes and you also choose how you want to be notified that you have new message, through or through a text message to your phone. Notifications do not have any information on what is in the message, only that there is a new message in your mailbox. To access the mailbox, you log in with your e-id. For business mailboxes, the same rules apply as described above: persons who are authorised to sign for the firm and registered delegates

5 can access the mailbox. For senders, it does not matter which mailbox a citizen or business chooses to use. For authorities who want to send messages through this system, you join the infrastructure and then you can look up at the time of each sending which recipients have joined. For recipients that have joined, an electronic message is sent and for those that have not joined, a regular paper letter is sent instead. The actual sending is not built into the infrastructure; you need to either send messages yourself or contract someone to do it. Statistics Sweden plan to join this infrastructure in We have a new common tool for planned sendings built into our common production environment, and the plan is to expand this to look up recipients and send messages securely to those that have joined. For those that have not joined, letters will be sent out through our printing facility that the planned sendings service communicates with, by sending files with messages to print and lists of recipients. If login information is to be printed, the service will also communicate with the Styx system mentioned above to find user-ids and passwords that are not stored in a readable format anywhere outside Styx. The reason that this is not planned until 2017 is that we wanted to dedicate resources to the e- ID solution and Styx first, and then connect the planned sendings service with Styx and the infrastructure for secure electronic communication. The Swedish government is very keen on the My messages infrastructure being used as much as possible, and monitors that all authorities with large message flows (Statistics Sweden is definitely one of those authorities) join by the end of 2017 at the latest. But for this to take full flow, more recipients need to join. At the moment it is completely voluntary to get a secure mailbox, which means only a small fraction of all citizens and businesses have done so. But the number is growing and the government has now announced that they look into getting a mailbox for all citizens, and making sending through My messages the main way of communication between authorities and citizens. For businesses, the growth will probably be slower, and for larger enterprises there is also the same problem with connecting persons to the business for accessing the mailbox. A large enterprise will probably get lots of messages and need a way to distribute them internally, but this is not in the planning within the development of the infrastructure at the moment. 5. Reduced and simplified supply of information This investigation was started in 2012 with the aim of creating an infrastructure that supported the idea of one figure, once, in one place for businesses. The idea is to support re-use of data between authorities and for businesses to have one place where all mandatory data provision to government authorities could take place. The investigation delivered reports in 2013 (SOU 2013:80) and 2015 (SOU 2015:33). The infrastructure proposed can be described as in figure 1 below:

6 Figure 1. Infrastructure for one figure, once, in one place. Source: Based on SOU 2013:80. The idea is that the businesses should be able to log in (using e-id as described above) to a portal where all mandatory data provisions to governmental agencies are collected. It should be noted here that there are two types of data provisions. One type is initiated by the authorities, and is mandatory for some or all businesses (for example sending the annual report, sending tax returns, replying to statistical surveys). They are listed under current demands (aktuella uppgiftskrav) in the picture above. These should be announced from authorities to businesses through My messages as described above. Another type is when data provision is initiated by the business itself, for example to seek permissions or report that they have started a new operation that has to be registered. These are listed under Apply and report (ansök och anmäl) in the picture. Every demand is linked to an e-service through the register of demands (Uppgiftskrav). By clicking on a link in either of those lists, the business is transferred to the relevant authority and its e-service, in the example above it is the tax agency (Skatteverket). When using an e-service, said service often asks for standard information about the business, information that is almost always asked by all e-services (name of the business, organisational number, address, phone number et cetera). This information, Common information (Samordnade uppgifter), should be accessible (and possible to change if it is wrong or outdated) in the portal and also to bring into the different e-services to prefill fields instead of filling them in manually. When a current demand is fulfilled, it should be taken out of the list. For this, some kind of register or information on the status of all demands (Inlämningar) is necessary. And in order to promote reuse of information between authorities and lowering the amount of information requested, definitions of all information asked in all e-services (Uppgiftsdefinitioner) is also necessary. Actual sharing of information between authorities is not within this infrastructure, hence the dotted line in the right side of the picture. The dotted line across the top of the picture shows that a business should not have to go through the portal, it should also be possible to go straight to a specific e-service and fulfil the demand. After a circulation for comments it was clear that many bodies wanted adjustments to the proposed structure. First and foremost it was suggested to use the existing portal verksamt.se for this rather than to build something new. This suggestion is also what was decided to

7 proceed with. In a first step, the register of demands and a first version of Common information has been implemented within verksamt.se, so that it is possible to see all possible demands and see and ask for changes of common information. But no other functionality has been implemented thus far. An ongoing project is working on using Common information to prefill e-services outside verksamt.se. No register on the status of demands has been introduced, and no register of definitions. It was envisioned that authorities would start joining e-services to this infrastructure in 2016, but it remains to be seen if any such e-services will be introduced this year. It should also be noted that the investigation proposed a new government agency to maintain the infrastructure, and also push other authorities to reuse information and join their e-services to the infrastructure. This proposition was turned down, and the maintenance is now taken care of within the maintenance of verksamt.se. This probably means that progress will be slower or halt. Statistics Sweden is one of three producers of Common information, together with the Swedish tax agency and the Swedish Companies Registration Office. Which authority delivers which piece of information is decided jointly, using the best possible source in each case. The information provided by Statistics Sweden comes from the publicly available part of our business register. For us to join our e-services, we first need to solve e-id authentication (see above), so that will come at a later stage. We are also one of the 14 authorities who have described all our demands in the register of demands. 6. XBRL and digitalisation of data provision processes Of course, digitalisation in itself is not new for businesses. They have had administrative systems for book-keeping, wages and salaries, sales and other operations for a long time. However, data provision to authorities for a long time relied on filling in paper forms. Over the last 10 years, this data provision has been moving gradually to the internet, but in truth this digitalisation process is only half-baked. It is still reliant on a person filling in a questionnaire, albeit using a computer instead of pen and paper, and the questionnaire can be intelligent and offer help, routing, quality checks and other aid in filling in the data. But in order for digitalisation to have a full break-through in the communication between businesses and authorities, it is necessary to take one step further, and allow direct transfer from the administrative systems in businesses to the authorities requesting information. This normally goes by the name machine to machine data collection since it is set up only once and then over time runs automatically without the involvement of a physical person. Such a process has the potential of dramatically reducing response burden on businesses. There is of course also the possibility to have semi-automated solutions with a large part of automation where respondents extract a file from their systems and send them without further treatment. However, there are many things that need to be overseen for a machine to machine data collection process to work. From a statistical office s point of view, here is what we deem the most important ones, but they are just as relevant to other data collectors as well: Re-design of survey borderlines. Many surveys have a long history and were created for specific purposes of uses. But a fully digitalised data collection requires us to look at the surveys, or more specifically what data requests should be in which survey, differently. It would be more efficient to adapt survey borderlines to data availability in order to be able to extract relevant information from business systems that might not always speak easily with each other. Perhaps one business system = one survey is the best way?

8 Re-design of survey content. Many surveys do revise their content occasionally or even frequently, but there is still a large gap between what information and definitions surveys ask for and what is actually available in business systems. Many surveys ask businesses to adapt to our statistical definitions by including and excluding data based on detailed descriptions and definitions. For a digitalised data collection, this also needs to be turned around. We need to collect what is actually in business systems, and then transform that information ourselves to statistical concepts. This raises many issues for the statistical office such as methodological questions and relying more on model assumptions in the estimation. Technical solutions that allow for businesses or their IT service providers to set up machine to machine data provision. This involves formats, transfer methods, security and much more. The statistical office needs to offer support in this work, meaning our IT departments need to be prepared for this shift. But it also means adapting our IT systems within our offices to allow for large data flows coming this way, and new processing tools. Considering these needs, it also becomes clear that this digitalisation process needs authorities to work together for it to work and be efficient. If each authority that collects data sets up its own formats, its own technical solutions and uses its own definitions it will not be attractive to businesses and service providers like software producers to implement a digitalised data collection. But if the same information using the same definitions (the ones that are already in the business systems), the same format and the same technical solutions can be used to send data to many authorities, it will be much more attractive to build these processes into business systems. Therefore, it is very important that authorities work together on these issues and agree on concepts and definitions as well as technical solutions. Reports on this matter have been written by authorities in co-operation (Bolagsverket et al 2013, Brede et al 2015). When it comes to technical formats, XBRL (extensible Business Reporting Language) is the format that is most likely going to be used for most business data provision. XBRL is an open international standard (based on XML) for digital business reporting, managed by a global not for profit consortium, XBRL International. XBRL provides a language in which reporting terms can be defined. Those terms can then be used to uniquely represent the contents of financial statements or other kinds of compliance, performance and business reports. XBRL lets reporting information move between organisations accurately and digitally. XBRL is already used in more than 50 countries worldwide. In Sweden, the uptake of XBRL has been slow, but in 2015, an effort was made to change that. A technical committee lead by SIS, Swedish Standards Institute and consisting of the Swedish tax agency, the Swedish Companies Registration Office, Statistics Sweden and the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority together with XBRL experts agreed on making XBRL Swedish Standard for electronic reporting of financial information. This means that the authorities have committed to introducing XBRL as specified format for providing data. This will hopefully have an impact on IT service providers realising that this is the format to build into business system to extract data for reporting to government agencies. But XBRL is only a technical format, it also needs to be filled with content, definitions of reporting terms. This content is called taxonomies. To agree on content and definitions is a huge undertaking, since needs, history, culture and use of information differs between authorities. But it still needs to be done. In 2015, a working group with representatives from

9 the Swedish tax agency, the Swedish Companies Registration Office and Statistics Sweden made an investigation on how common taxonomies can be developed and maintained in Sweden (Brede et al 2015). The report was delivered to decision-makers within the different authorities in November 2015 with suggestions regarding future work. No decision on this has been taken yet, but the authorities continue working together in the area. In March 2016, a study visit was made to the Netherlands to see what could be learned from their use of XBRL and Standard business reporting (SBR). The authorities agree that there are large possible gains from proceeding together in this area, and we hope that the government takes a decision to work along the suggestions from the working group. 7. Conclusion There are several cross-government initiatives that are on-going to simplify data provision for both citizens and businesses. For businesses, there is also on-going work to support digitalisation of the data provision. These initiatives have been progressing more slowly than expected by the government, so more pressure has been put on the government agencies to join the initiatives and take advantage of their possibilities. Thus far, no forcing regulations have been put in place; the government still relies on voluntary joining of the different initiatives. Statistics Sweden is active in joining all the on-going initiatives to support digitalisation and simplify data provision, but there is still some way to go before everything is in place. However, there are no signs that this development is slowing down or ending. There is still a lot of work to be done, both internally and together with other authorities, but there are also possible gains in efficiency and better data collection processes in the end. The era of authorities working by themselves has come to an end, cooperation and collaboration will be the only way to move forward. 8. References Bolagsverket, Jordbruksverket, SCB, Skatteverket, Transportstyrelsen : Lätt att lämna rätt - En myndighetsgemensam rapport om hur det kan bli enklare för företag att lämna ekonomiska uppgifter till myndigheter. (2013) Brede, N, Persson, A, Erikson A-G, Levinsson, L, Rastman, M, Reinsson, C, Schröder, M: Standardisering av finansiell information en möjlighet för Sverige (Bolagsverket, SCB, Skatteverket, 2015) SOU 2013:80 Ett minskat och förenklat uppgiftslämnande för företagen. Statens offentliga utredningar SOU 2015:33 Uppgiftslämnarservice för företagen. Statens offentliga utredningar 2015.