[ London | Voorburg | Ottawa]

Welcome to the City Groups

Over the years many countries became dissatisfied with the pace of development of international statistical standards. As a result a number of representatives from national statistical offices started to meet informally to address selected problems. The first of these groups was the group that is now known as the Voorburg group. Its name derives from the city in the Netherlands where it first met. The experience with the Voorburg group in particular and with other city groups has shown that the international community can benefit greatly from such a process. It is important to note also that technical expertise and certainly practical experience resides mainly with national statistical offices. It was, therefore, recognized that these informal consultation groups are an innovative way to use country resources to improve and speed up the international standards development process.

In order to preserve maximum flexibility city groups as a matter of principle determine their own individual mechanism of work. Still, there exist some common characteristics. City groups are informal groups of experts primarily from national statistical agencies. Participation by representatives is voluntary as is the existence of the group itself. If there is insufficient interest in the group then it either is not created or soon ceases to exist. Each representative is expected to fund his or her participation in the group. While each group sets its own working procedures generally a key criterion for participation is the ability of each member to contribute a substantive paper to each meeting of the group. It is usually the responsibility of the host to prepare a volume of proceedings after each meeting. The host country may change after each meeting.

• The London Group

The London Group was created in 1993 to allow practitioners to share their experience of developing and implementing environmental accounts linked to the economic accounts of the System of National Accounts . The meetings provide a forum for review, comparison and discussion of work underway by participants towards development of environmental accounts.

• Voorburg

The Voorburg Group was established in 1986, after an initiative by Statistics Canada and the United National Statistical Office (UNSO). This initiative came in response to the observation that service statistics were less developed than statistics on the other economic fields although services contributed already over half of the Gross Domestic Product in many countries. The Group's main purpose remains to be an informal forum for the exchange of views on services statistics, as a result of which countries, international organizations and EUROSTAT may be assisted in, or directed towards the solution of particular problems or the development of international guidelines or handbooks in the field of service statistics.

• Ottawa

The Ottawa Group was created in 1994 to provide a forum for specialists to share their experiences and discuss research on crucial problems of measuring price change. Without avoiding theoretical issues, the focus of the Group is on applied reasearch, particularly, though not exclusively, in the area of consumer price indices. Participants are specialists and practioners who work for, or are advisors to, statistical agencies in different countries, or international organisations.

Comments, Michael Wright, Statistics Canada, Environment Accounts and Statistics Division