Plan methodology and strategy

ESeC is a substantial and complex project. Therefore WP 1 is specifically designed to establish and implement common standards, quality monitoring, and control procedures for the project through the application of the project management framework described in section 6. It will act as a means by which to review all WPs, assessing whether goals are achieved and deliverables are produced on time. A Project Manager will ensure partners taking the lead for a work packages successfully deliver results for each stage in the project. This will be achieved by ensuring partners are fully informed about appropriate parts of the project and are provided with sufficient information regarding the aims of the work package, any work dependencies, and establishing a timetable for deliverables. The Project Manager will request regular updates from partners to monitor progress towards objectives; this will be managed through various forms of communication and reporting mechanisms, for example through face-to-face, teleconference and audio link meetings and via electronic mail. This ongoing assessment will ensure any project-related problems are identified and resolved quickly to minimize delays to deliverables. It will also allow for the evaluation and quality review of all output so that project deliverables are produced to required standards.

At all stages emerging results and news will also be available to partners and other users via the project website which will provide a primary broadcasting channel for ESeC. As such, the website will operate as a common database holding various project documentation and information, and allowing effective dissemination of all project progress. Four partner meetings have also been planned to take place at WPs 2, 4, 12 and 14 to discuss and report progress against the objectives, and to communicate any potential problems. Consequently, there will be various opportunities to give regular feedback to project management. Project progress reports at six-monthly intervals will also be produced for the Commission. As the partner responsible for WP 1, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) has considerable experience in managing large and complex projects and is fully aware that it is of vital importance that project findings are widely disseminated and implemented. Therefore, while the main dissemination activities such as reports, conferences and websites are explicitly planned within each work package, ONS will also encourage the consortium to make additional efforts to disseminate and promote its work via academic conferences, books, articles in scientific journals, etc.

In order to decide on a common framework for the validation studies, WPs 2, 3 and 4 bring together the expertise of all partners. The results from these three work packages will then serve as the basis for the six validation studies (WPs 5-11). After all these studies have been concluded the results will be presented and discussed at a conference (WP 12). The final result of this conference will be an ESeC that can be applied across all countries of the EU. This ultimate version of ESeC will be made available via a web-based user guide (WP 13). The partnership will ensure that a broad coverage of new member states will be represented at the final workshop (WP 14) to obtain a balanced evaluation of the new tool. EU new member states will be invited to apply the ESeC within their national statistical sources and to discuss and evaluate their results. The outcome of these studies will provide a further means of measuring the success of the project.