In accordance with the government's decision of April 29 on the need to integrate personal information from state registers to determine the prevalence of Covid 19 in certain professions and sectors, the Central Statistical Bureau (CSB) has been preparing data on persons infected with Covid- 19 on a weekly basis since 11 June and submitting this data in a pseudonymous form to the Ministry of Economics for the performance of socio-economic analysis of the infected population.
“The CSB already has extensive experience in the use of administrative data at the personal level. Experience was gained by making a decision in 2012 on the preparation of the Population and Housing Census 2021 indicators from administrative data. Already then, work was started to establish a good, stable cooperation with the largest state registers and to ensure regular receipt of data, creating secure data processing and storage,” says Aija Žīgure, the President of the Central Statistical Bureau of Latvia.
The next step was the integration of administrative data for the monitoring of higher education institutions graduates by the Ministry of Education and Science, which once a year provides information on the employment and income of graduates. These tasks have allowed the CSB to improve data processing and storage processes and employees to develop knowledge in administrative data processing and integration.
The advantage of Latvia is the use of a unified personal identifier - personal identification code - in registers, which allows such personal data to be integrated. Data from the Office of Citizenship and Migration Affairs, the State Revenue Service, the State Social Insurance Agency and the State Employment Agency are used to prepare data on persons infected with Covid- 19.
Good policy is based on data-based decision-making. In order to reach this target, it is possible to use both the data of population surveys conducted by the CSB, as well as the integration of data from various registers and the creation of new indicators. The mission of the CSB is to prepare reliable statistical data for the study of socio-economic processes and future decision-making.
The CSB plans to further develop the use of administrative data, ensuring the development and preparation of indicators relevant to both policy makers and the public. The next challenge will be to analyse the data of persons vaccinated against Covid- 19.
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