1. Official Statistics is committed to quality.
2. Quality has many dimensions and means different things in different settings. Quality can refer to organisations, to processes and to products. Organisational quality is outside the scope of GSIM and GSBPM.
3. Quality is not a separate information object or group of information objects in GSIM, but can be adequately described with the current information objects. This scenario shows how the production of quality indicators can be described, how these indicators can be used in rules to control the production process and how the indicators can be integrated in a quality report.
Quality measures and reports
132. This scenario has two parts and looks a little different to the previous four scenarios. The first part describes a process that could be used to calculate response rates (i.e. a quality measure), and the second part how these rates could be included in a quality report in the form of a qualitative assessment. Refer to Figure 1 for a representation of the scenario.
133. Part 1: Calculate the response rates needed for a set of data
a) A process is setup to calculate the response rates for a Data Set .
b) A quality check is included as a part of this process
134. Part 2: A qualitative assessment statement is included in a quality report.
a) A quality report is prepared
Mapping of example description to GSIM information objects
135. GSIM can be used by those people involved to identify the pieces of information that they require to undertake their roles and in the design of systems.
136. Part 1: Calculate the response rates for a set of data .
a) A process is setup to calculate the response rates for a Data Set - First, a Process Step Design is created to outline the specification of the Process Step , in this case the calculation of the response rates for a particular Data Set . The design includes the Process Input Specification and Process Output Specification – the required inputs, and expected outputs of the Process Step .
For the response rate calculation example, the inputs include original Data Set, the Instance Variables that describe the original Data Set for which the response rates are to be calculated, and the parameter Inputs , (the calculation formulas used to obtain the Unit and Item response rates). The expected outputs of the described Process Step will include a new Data Set of the calculated response rate data, and new Instance Variables to represent the data.
The execution of the Process Step is recorded by the Process Step Execution Record , which identifies the (actual) inputs and outputs at the time of the process execution. In this example the response rate calculation process is itself made up of two lower level Process Steps , to calculate the unit response rate, and the item response rate respectively. Each of these Process Steps was defined through the Process Step Design , and then when used, captured by the Process Step Execution Record .
b) A quality check is included as a part of this process - As part of the overall Process Step Design , a Process Control was included in the Process Step as a quality check. This quality check stage allows for a check point in the procedure to ensure the calculated response rates are within an acceptable range.
If the calculated rates are within an acceptable range, the output of the process (both the calculated Instance Variables and the Process Metric ) can be used in a subsequent Process Step (scenario part 2). If the calculated rates are not accepted, then the process ends, and other Process Steps may need to be employed (such as a review of the collection Process Steps to allow for more acceptable response rates).
Part 2: A qualitative assessment statement included in the quality report.
a) A quality report is prepared - First, Process Step Designs are created for the Process Steps , in this case the preparation of the quality report which includes a qualitative assessment (based on the calculated response rates).
There are two Process Steps involved. The first is the Process Step of preparing the qualitative assessment of the calculated response rates. The Process Inputs are the Data Set and Process Metric created from the Process Step in Part 1 and the Process Output is a Representation (the qualitative assessment statement).
This Representation in turn becomes the Process Input of the second Process Step which is the creation of the quality report. The Process Output is a Product.
The execution of the overall Process is recorded in two Process Step Execution Records .
Figure 3. Response Rate Calculation for quality report