Fostering Excellent Research by the Austrian Micro Data Center (AMDC)

1 Introduction

Internationally, National Statistical Offices have played a major role in establishing access to administrative microdata for research purposes.^[1] Examples include Statistics Denmark,^[2] Statistics Finland,^[3] and the Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek (CBS) in the Netherlands.^[4]

In Austria, microdata access for research purposes was very limited for a long time. However, in 2022, a change in legislation enabled access to microdata for research entities comparable to the European forerunner countries. Before this change, Austria’s National Statistical Office, “Statistics Austria”,^[5] was not authorized to provide access to data on the level of individuals or firms to researchers. Consequently, it was often not possible to conduct empirical tests of important research hypothesis and identify causal inference using Austrian data. Thus, Austria was at a disadvantage as a science location and it was difficult for research entities to provide evidence-based scientific advice to Austrian policy makers in many fields. In contrast, more than 1500 scientific projects and publications were published from 2006 to 2022 using Dutch microdata provided by the Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek (CBS).^[6]

Since 2022, following an amendment to the Federal Statistics Act (German: Bundesstatistikgesetz, BStatG, see Section 3), the legal basis for remote access to indirectly identifiable microdata for scientific purposes was established. With the amendment, Statistics Austria established a new research data infrastructure, Austrian Micro Data Center (AMDC), which opened July 1, 2022.

The aim of the Austrian Micro Data Center (AMDC) is to provide a central, data protection-compliant remote access to statistical registers, as well as to other microdata of federal governmental entities for empirical research. In this sense, a one-stop shop for scientific purposes has been created and, by doing so, an essential research data infrastructure established.^[7] According the Federal Statistics Act (BStatG §§ 31, 32), the basic infrastructure of the AMDC is financed by the Austrian Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research (BMBWF), whereas the variable costs must be borne by the research entities. This highlights the importance of competitive research calls for registry research.

The establishment of the AMDC strongly follows existing best-practices models, in particular microdata accesses by the Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek (CBS) and Statistics Denmark. This paper describes the application process and project work with the AMDC (Section 2), provides an overview of the microdata accessible in the AMDC (Section 3), and gives an outlook on possible further developments (Section 4).

2 Application Process and Project Work

3 Accessible Microdata

In general, the AMDC provides access to a wide range of microdata derived from three different sources (for the structure of the AMDC see Figure 1):

1. Microdata of Statistics Austria

2. Microdata of the Federal State

3. Microdata of the Research Entity

Figure 1:

Structure of the AMDC.

First, the AMDC grants access to microdata of Statistics Austria. This microdata includes not only the microdata generated by Statistics Austria by survey but also include data from many administrative registers that are used by Statistics Austria for the production of official statistics, such as the Central Population Register (German: Zentrales Melderegister, ZMR) as well as the complete corporate, income and value added tax data (for an overview over the microdata of Statistics Austria provided in the AMDC, see Table 1 in the Appendix).^[17] In addition, research entities may request access to additional administrative data from the federal state based on the Research Organization Act (German: Forschungsorganisationsgesetz, FOG, § 38b). The rules in this second track of data access are different, as the precondition for the access to these data are FOG regulations by the responsible ministries together with the Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research (German: Bundesministerium für Bildung, Wissenschaft und Forschung, BMBWF). In this case, in line with its one-stop-shop-approach, the AMDC will forward the data request to the responsible federal ministry, acting as a liaison with the research entities and communicating decisions rendered by these ministries.

The final data track is microdata provided by the research entities themselves, which can be linked to the other data. Precondition for the use of this data source is the removal of all direct identifiers and the pseudonymization with a specific encrypted identifier (e.g. vbPK-AS; see above) or any available firm identifier compatible with AMDC data. Individual and firm level pseudonyms are used by the AMDC to make data sets linkable.

The AMDC microdata catalogue holds time series starting from the early 2000s. Researchers’ requests for longer observation periods cannot be met in the foreseeable future as the legal foundation for safely linking data by the encrypted identifier (vbPK) was only established in 2004; thus the implementation of the unique identifiers in all areas of data gathering is, as of 2023, still an ongoing process. Nonetheless, the data available at the AMDC is rather comprehensive, in particular with respect to the variety of topics. In terms of person and household characteristics, the research opportunities in the AMDC are quite extensive: The Austrian Census, consisting of the Population Census, the Housing Census and the Census of Local Units of Employment, is available since 2011. Given its register-based nature, since then the majority of variables are produced on an annual basis. Income tax statistics and education related statistics add to valuable information based on registers. In addition, data on COVID-19 vaccinations and data from COVID-19 infections will be available in the AMDC creating research opportunities to analyse public health measures during the pandemic and the long-term effects of a COVID-19 infection.

With respect to business statistics, with data including the companies register, corporate tax statistics, trade statistics and foreign affiliates statistics, remarkable opportunities are provided within the AMDC to conduct excellent business-related research, for instance when it come to the analysis of the development of productivity or factors of success. The coordinated employment statistics allows for linking firm level data to individual level data. In this regard, it enables researchers to analyse data on the firm and employer levels, while simultaneously changing perspective and including individual, family and household levels (see Table 1).

4 Status and Outlook as of 2023

The potential for further development of the AMDC is very promising, for instance by linking existing and new data sets or expanding the data available to new data sources and new topical areas. First, within the AMDC it is possible to link individual level data (e.g. employees) to firms (employers) (Abowd and Kramarz 1999; Goetz et al. 2015, Weinhardt et al. 2017). Here, the AMDC can rely on unique identifiers, which can consistently be used for past, current and future data. Second, in terms of the topical coverage of the AMDC, it is expected that the microdata sets will expand to include a number of health and socio-economic characteristics. The sources include data from the public administration, data from research entities and even (tailor-made) survey data to fill current gaps.^[18] In this context, one highlight is the Austrian Socio-Economic Panel (ASEP), which will start its full operations in 2024. The aim of ASEP is to establish a longitudinal household panel comprising an annual household survey that is complemented with register-based data, thus allowing researchers to fully benefit from the linkage of numerous, already existing and new data sources from public administration and data held by Statistics Austria.^[19]

The introduction of a domain specific unique personal identifier (e.g. the vbPK-AS for Statistics Austria) in the Austrian public administration, legally implemented in 2004,^[20] opened doors to link data within and across the Austrian public administration and, in turn, for academic research. Since implementation, the identifier is gaining increasing importance in administrative bodies. With the implementation of new public digital registers (e.g. the Austrian Vital Statistics Registry in 2015), the number of linkable data sets is still growing.

As of 2023, data available in AMDC is based primarily on data from within the statistical production process (source 1, see Section 3). It is expected that second sources – additional administrative data from the federal state – will grow over time, as separate legal acts by the responsible ministries are the precondition for the use of these data. In order to maximize the potential of the AMDC for excellent research and evidence-based scientific policy advice, access to these data must be released by the responsible ministries through FOG regulations. Since the ministries have committed themselves to data access for science, especially in the context of the current crises, the authors assume that the ministries will issue such regulations in a timely manner. Ultimately, this will also further strengthen Austria as a location for science.