Data Warehouse (DWH) Monitoring in the Public Employment Service (PES)

Vienna, 3-4 June 2004

The peer review was held on 3rd and 4th June 2004 in Vienna, Austria, hosted by the Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs and Labour and the Arbeitsmarktservice (Public Employment Service). In addition to the host country, a further 10 countries participated in the discussions, as follows: Belgium, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Hungary, Latvia, Norway, Spain, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.

Data Warehouse Monitoring in the Public Employment Service

The Data Warehouse (DWH) of the Austrian Public Employment Service (PES) is a management information system central to the monitoring of the labour market. It brings together information from sources such as the central register of the unemployed, data on the take-up of active measures and notified job vacancies and inter-links them to provide an integrated tool of analysis. The system began as a pilot project in 1998 and has since gone through various upgrades, as experience with its operation has developed. The inclusion of the database from the social insurance system (with information on insurance episodes and the characteristics of the individuals insured, as well as some data on employer characteristics), to create DWH-Monitoring, has been a major enhancement of the DWH.

The Peer Review focused on the use of the DHW for labour market monitoring purposes. Currently, the practical implementation of DWH-Monitoring is sub-divided into three modules, each of which allows the monitoring of different aspects of the Austrian labour market. The first, follow-up monitoring, covers the experiences of those who have participated in active labour market measures through the PES. The second module, career monitoring covers a wider perspective and looks at the flows into and out of employment for virtually all the population. The third module, enterprise monitoring covers the dynamics of jobs within sectors for those individuals with an employment relationship. Given the scale of the data handled by the system, access to the information has been simplified through the use of data cubes - these are ready-made aggregations of data, derived from the underlying database tables, and benefit from regular and timely updating.

The operation and value of the DWH is under constant review by the relevant agencies and, while it is essentially a tool for monitoring the work of the PES, it also represents a useful basis for labour market research and evaluation. However, while the DWH can usefully show the outcomes from, for example, participation in active labour market measures, it is subject to a number of limitations with regard to measuring casually the impact of such measures. These limitations are both methodological ones (eg it is not always possible to construct appropriate control groups against which to look at the impact of a measure), and limitations in the number of characteristics captured in the data (eg variables relevant to the impact of the measure may not all be captured by the data). Its role is, therefore, complementary to more traditional research methods, such as surveys. The Peer Review heard that there is considerable potential for enhancing the range of databases feeding into the DWH. For example, the inclusion of data on education, self-employment and income is likely to be explored in the future, as are possible links to Labour Force Survey data.

Aspects of Transferability

Discussions on transferability of the DWH approach showed that there was general support for the need for such a monitoring system and the Austrian experience was seen as highly encouraging, being praised for its characteristics, comprehensiveness, and user-friendliness. Some countries had already moved in a similar direction, though with differing experiences that indicated the potential problems in adopting the approach. Significantly there were felt to be few technical obstacles to creating a DWH, although the cost of doing so could be an issue in some of the countries. The need to overcome any data protection and privacy issues was considered important, particularly when combining data from different administrative sources, but again was not felt to be a major obstacle if the necessary political will existed. However, for those countries who have yet to develop the capacity to build a DWH along the Austrian lines, a clear need for a more thorough cost-benefit appraisal of the approach (setting the cost of creating a DWH, against the possible benefits, eg in terms of improved performance of active measures) was thought to be desirable.

Participating independent experts

• Helmut MAHRINGER

  Austria
  Austrian Institute of Economic Research (WIFO)
• Peter VAN DER HALLEN

  Belgium
  Higher Institute of Labour Studies - HIVA
• Rumen POPOV

  Bulgaria
  Institute of Agricultural Economics
• Tomas SIROVATKA

  Czech Republic
  Masaryk University
• Michael ROSHOLM

  Denmark
  University of Aarhus
• Gyula NAGY

  Hungary
  Budapest University of Economics and Public Administration
• Alf VANAGS

  Latvia
  Baltic International Centre for Economic Policy Studies
• Erling BARTH

  Norway
  Institute for Social Research and University of Tromso
• Fernando MUNOZ-BULLÓN

  Spain
  University Carlos III Madrid
• Peter VAN NES

  The Netherlands
  SEOR Erasmus University Rotterdam
• Stephen LISSENBURGH

  United Kingdom
  Employment Research Policy Studies Institute