The Metadata System at Statistics Sweden in an International Perspective

The metadata infrastructure of a statistical office should provide different kinds of metadata, serving the needs of different kinds of users. The metadata systems need to be organized in such a way that metadata can be captured and processed in an efficient way, without too much manual work and with efficient computer support. The paper describes on-going efforts at Statistics Sweden to achieve these goals, including both problems and opportunities that have been encountered. One important conclusion from this work, and from discussions with other statistical agencies, is that metadata systems in national and international agencies need to be better harmonized in order to facilitate international exchange of statistical data and metadata. The paper presents some ideas about how this could be achieved in the future.