A Framework for the Evaluation of Administrative Data

The decline in response rates observed by several national statistical institutes, their desire to limit response burden and the significant budget pressures they face support greater use of administrative data to produce statistical information. The administrative data sources they must consider have to be evaluated according to several aspects to determine their fitness for use. Statistics Canada recently developed a process to evaluate administrative data sources for use as inputs to the statistical information production process. This evaluation is conducted in two phases. The initial phase requires access only to the metadata associated with the administrative data considered, whereas the second phase uses a version of data that can be evaluated. This article outlines the evaluation process and tool.