Process Modeling
In June 2015, the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, (UNECE), Eurostat and the OECD proposed a generic model for describing and defining the activities of statistical organisations: GAMSO (standing for Generic Activity Model for Statistical Organisations). The model comprises four broad activity areas: Strategy and leadership, Capability management, Corporate support and Production. In the case of the Production activity area, processes can be represented with the generic model for the description of statistical production processes known as GSBPM (standing for Generic Statistical Business Process Model).
The United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), Eurostat and the OECD have
developed a Common Metadata Framework, part of which relates to the different phases
of the statistical production process. In July 2007, European statisticians opted
to rely on a generic model for the description of statistical production processes:
the GSBPM (standing for Generic Statistical Business Process Model).
In February 2017, the members of the ESSC (European Statistical System Committee)
approved the inclusion of the model in the list of European standards.
The GSBPM is a standard framework enabling statistical organisations to adopt a common
terminology and to agree on the detailed description of the life cycle of a statistical
operation. It is a versatile model designed to break any statistical production operation
down into eight phases: specification of needs, design, building, collection, processing,
analysis, dissemination, evaluation; these phases are further broken down into sub-phases.
The GSBPM is independent of the data source and can therefore be used regardless
of the nature of the operation – whether a survey, an administrative source or a “mixed”
source. It is an evolving model, the current version of which was released in December
2013. An update is currently underway.