Transcript bea.gov Comments and plans

BEA Experience with
NAWWE
Brent R. Moulton
OECD, Working Party on National Accounts
Paris
November 4, 2009
Background
 Since BEA’s first submission of SNA 93 data in 2000, the data
submission has been based on spreadsheets with a gradual
increase in details and metadata.
 Process involved exporting data to spreadsheets—a timeconsuming and often error prone process.
 Before exporting to Excel, data were stored in time-series
databases (Aremos and Fame).
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BEA implementation of NAWWE
 To translate from these time-series databases to a relational
database, we used NAWWE start-up files to reorganize the
data.
 In the process of reorganizing the data, several smaller timeseries databases were consolidated.
 An SQL relational database was constructed using NAWWE
table codes to form the core identities.
 A test submission was provided for 2000–2007. After OECD
provided feedback, we resubmitted in mid-2008.
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Comments and plans
 BEA intends to continue its participation in NAWWE with our
upcoming submissions.
 BEA received useful feedback from OECD.
 Timely communication and participation by other statistical
offices would be useful.
 Transforming our time-series data into a relational database
allowed BEA to identify redundancies and inconsistencies.
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