CBS building data ecosystem with partners

Objective figures

Astrid Boeijen, Director of the CBS division Data services, research and innovation division, explains: ‘It is imperative to use objective, recent figures for decision-making and policy development. CBS stands for objective figures but also for actionable intelligence. Big data play a major role in this regard, as they help us produce up-to-date figures quickly whilst offering the possibility of comprehensive observation rather than survey sampling.’

Data ecosystem

CBS is currently using data from key government registers and survey data to compile its statistics. In the future, these sources will increasingly be combined with big data . ‘CBS is taking major steps in this area. However, we are becoming increasingly aware of the fact that innovating and building actionable intelligence cannot be undertaken alone. CBS’ strength lies in its enormous datasets, its extensive methodological knowledge, its innovations and its ability to merge data from different sources. Collaboration with businesses and knowledge institutions offers major opportunities to meet the the data needs of the government, for example and others We aim to achieve this by building a data ecosystem to reinforce each other’s knowledge and expertise.’

Creating added value

Over the past few years, CBS has entered into cooperation with various partners in the search for new big data sources. Together with its partners, CBS has also explored the technological possibilities of implementing big data as a source. Furthermore, CBS has been actively promoting data-driven working methods. Many of its partners participated in the Big Data Matters 2 seminar. They held presentations during the afternoon programme to delve deeper into the results of big data research. Together with CBS, they presented results pertaining to several key social themes such as mobility, energy transition and labour market (Big Data Matters 2019). Partners present included LinkedIn, RVO, RET, TomTom, T-Mobile, Mezuro and the municipalities of Eindhoven and Amsterdam. The collaboration efforts among the various parties yielded new insights including the crowdedness on sections of the Rotterdam metro network and the crowdedness in the city of Amsterdam on a public holiday such as King’s Day. Boeijen: ‘It is precisely this close collaboration that creates added value.’