CLAMOUR Project Participants

The consortium consists of classifications experts from the national statistical institutes of five EU member states, the French consultancy business LexiQuest and French private consultant Mr Roland Rousseau. There are 7 participating areas, referred to in the project as participants, in total, some of which include a significant number of experts. In the below description, only the lead expert appears for each participant. The ONS provides both the project co-ordinator (David Knight) and a main contractor (John Perry) for part of the project itself.

Office for National Statistics

ONS is a Next Steps agency and was formed in April 1996 following a merger between the Central Statistical Office and the Office of Population Censuses and Surveys. ONS is independent of any other government department and is accountable to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. It collects, compiles and provides the nation with a wide range of statistical information including our national accounts, balance of payments, measures of inflation, business statistics and labour market statistics. It also administers the registration of births, marriages and deaths in England and Wales, and compiles population statistics. Our important services include:

• producing the Retail Prices Index, the most widely used measure of inflation
• producing estimates of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the most widely used measure of the output of the UK economy
• producing a wide range of business statistics and trends by industry on individual markets and key sectors within the economy.
• providing statistics on employment and unemployment

David Knight, project co-ordinator, has extensive experience within the UK Government Statistical Service, with particular emphasis on economic statistics. He is a recognised expert in the field of economic classification systems and is Head of Economic and Statistical Classifications within the UK ONS. David has considerable international experience in classifications and has produced numerous technical papers and analyses. He is the UK representative on the Eurostat NACE Rev 1 / CPA Working Group for which he undertakes special projects, participates widely in EC and other Task Force meetings including those for TACIS and PHARE countries, is a member of the UN Voorburg Classifications Subgroup, assisting the UN Expert Group on classifications, and has chaired several major international meetings including UN ECE seminars. David is assisted by a co-ordination assistant. david.knight@ons.gov.uk

John Perry has been Head of Business Registers Unit at ONS since 1984. In the past, he has held various statistical posts within the UK Government Statistical Service including manager of Index of Industrial Production, Price Commission advisor on surveys and posts within the Survey Control Unit. He has also worked within the Home Office Research Unit, designing and processing statistical surveys. He has extensive experience in statistics and statistical computing and manages the UK business register. He is the technical advisor to Croatia and Hungary on business registers, the project co-ordinator for the DOSME PHARE project and an expert on PHARE PECO Panel Survey. He has a BSc (Hons) in Mathematics and a MSc in Applied Statistics and is a Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society. john.perry@ons.gov.uk

Statistics Finland

SF is a national statistical institute producing the majority of Finnish official statistics, as well as guiding and co-ordinating the activities of other producers of statistics in Finland. Statistics Finland is a government agency with almost 1,000 employees and a turnover of euro 42 million. In recent years, Statistics Finland has started to attach greater importance to research and development. Scientific research and the development of statistical methods supports the primary goal of statistical production: to provide up-to-date, reliable and high-quality statistics which meet the growing information needs of modern society. Considerable emphasis has been placed on the role and implementation of modern technology in facilitating data collection and dissemination of information and products to users and customers. Customer satisfaction is measured regularly. Quality has been improved with a number of pilot projects and by quality training.

Riitta Poukka has been head of classification services at Statistics Finland since 1998. She has participated in several classification development projects: the compilation of the national version of COFOG; the classification of economic land use of areas (Slices/ Land Use); and the development of tools and procedures for the archiving of statistical data. She represents Statistics Finland on, for example, the national standardisation forum and in Eurostat. s D1 Classification Working Group. Previous experience includes co-ordination planning (1985-97), head of household budget surveys (1976-1985), head of unit for statistics on university-level education (1974-75), and statistician on the 1970 Population Census (1971-74). She is a Master of Administrative Sciences (1970) and has good English. riitta.poukka@stat.fi

Riitta Hakari. Senior Statistician. Studied Political Science at the University of Helsinki, majoring in economics, Master of Political Science. Has worked at Statistics Finland since 1973 at the Volume Index of Industrial Output and annual industrial statistics. Par-ticipated in several classification revisions such as the introduction of HS and later of PRODCOM in Finland and in the construction of the 1988 national Standard In-dustrial Classification. Ms Hakari is currently responsible for industrial commodity classifications and represents Finland in Eurostat's PRODCOM Committee.

Hannu Lehtimäki. Senior Researcher. Studied Applied Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science at the University of Helsinki, Master of Arts. Worked at the Pohjola insurance company in tasks connected with the planning and programming of statistical sys-tems. Has worked at Statistics Finland since 1983 at the Data Processing Support Unit in tasks connected with user support and training, specialising in SAS applica-tions. Transferred in the early 1990s to the statistical Methodological R&D Unit, with special responsibility for the testing and introduction of different statistical software programs and methods and the production of related computer applica-tions. Fields of duties include time series, hedonic indices and training. Mr Le-htimäki has participated in several development projects involving quality devel-opment: quality manual, process descriptions, systematic work methods.

Matti Parkkinen. Senior Advisor. Studied Economics and Statistics at the University of Helsinki, Master of Political Science. Started working at Statistics Finland in 1972 while still studying. Has worked at the Industrial Statistics Unit, Public Relations and Mar-keting Unit and Business Register. Career has centred on diverse development tasks, such as revision of the calculation method of the Volume Index of Industrial Output and the setting up of Statistics Finland's regional services. While working at the Business Register, his work focused on quality improvement, development of methods to improve offered services, revision of the production method into a rela-tional database, revision of the method for estimating numbers of person employed, etc. Mr Parkkinen has also participated in many other development projects, in-cluding harmonisation of the system of concepts in labour force statistics. He has represented Statistics Finland at numinous meetings and working groups at home and abroad. As consulting expert he has participated in the construction of business registers in the Baltic States and put together an extensive package of teaching ma-terial for the Marketing Institute.

Heikki Pihlaja. Master of Political Science, studied at the University of Helsinki majoring in Eco-nomics. After graduation worked at the Board of Customs at Foreign Trade Statis-tics. Has worked at Statistics Finland since 1978 at the Industrial Statistics Unit and at the Co-ordination Unit. Mr Pihlaja is currently responsible for Industrial Statis-tics and has participated in e.g. development of structural business statistics in compliance with the Directives on statistics on enterprises.

Taru Tamminen. Statistician. Studying for a polytechnic degree in Business and Administration, has also studies Economics and Statistics at the Open University. Started at Statistics Finland in 1975, working first at the Interview Organisation and Special Compila-tions Unit and since 1987 at the Business Register. Has Participated in the revision of the national Standard Industrial Classification with special interest in issues con-nected with its application and in enterprise demography. Ms Tamminen contrib-utes to the Business Register's information service activity and to the compilation of publications.

Ismo Teikari. MSc. (Econ), Senior Researcher at Statistics Finland's Methodological R&D Unit. Doctoral dissertation due for completion shortly on "Controlling the distribution of response burden in longitudinal and cross section business surveys". Expertise in business surveys, business survey frames and classifications, sampling co-ordination, statistical disclosure control, imputation methods, empirical micro econometrics for business data, quality in statistics and statistical process control, statistical software. A number of contributed papers in conferences. An article with Prof. Carl-Erik Särndal and Mr Hannu Kröger was published in the Survey Meth-odology Journal in June 1999; another will be published in 2001. Other relevant re-cent/current activities: Member of the NACE Committee in the early 1990s. Mem-ber of the Task Force on Business Demographics and SME Statistics in 1993-1995.

Risto Syvänperä. Senior Statistician. Studied Mathematics and Computer Science at the University of Helsinki, Master of Arts. Has worked at Statistics Finland since 1978, first at Edu-cation and Population Statistics, then at the Co-ordination Unit in the section re-sponsible for concepts and classifications and since the early 1990s at the Classifi-cation Services Unit being responsible for technical solutions of the classification database and classification products. Mr Syvänperä has developed information ar-chitecture at Statistics Finland and electronic data transfer solutions for both Fin-nish and foreign projects.

Tuula Viitaharju. Head of the Business Register at Statistics Finland. Studied Economics and Statis-tics at the University of Tampere, Master of Social Sciences. After graduation, worked as Analyst in the Planning Office of the City of Hämeenlinna. Came to Statistics Finland in 1984. Participated in and headed diverse development projects relating to data collection and quality improvement of the Business Register. Spe-cial expertise in issued connected with the exploitation of administrative data in of-ficial statistics and co-ordinates the use of taxation data in statistics. Ms Viitaharju represents Finland in the Business Register Committee.

Institut National de la Statistique et des Etudes Economiques

INSEE is the French NSI, created in 1946. The missions of the Institute are to develop the statistical methods of public economic and social statistics, to realise a wide use of and role for these statistics and to co-ordinate the network of public bodies involved in that domain. There are 7,000 staff including nearly 2,000 professional statisticians (Administrateurs, Attachés, all fully trained in the ENSAE . the National School of Statistics and Economic Studies). The main participants in this project will come from the Classification Unit and from the Business Statistics Department. The Classification Unit is responsible for classifications theory and for the creation and management of the economic classifications. The business statistics department is in charge of methods and of the co-ordination of the business surveys. The two units have developed software for:

• management of the classifications, correlation tables and, more generally, for tree structures
• automatic coding through a method based on the theory of information
• automatic and assisted coding of the description of the activities and of the detailed products based on linguistic engineering (NLP).

In addition to their responsibilities in INSEE the involved people represent the Institute in working groups, task forces, training and other international or European groups as national experts.

Emile Bruneau: ENSAE. 32 years in INSEE. Price Index, Business register and industrial surveys, specialist on employment and unemployment statistics, Head of the statistical office of French Polynesia, Head of the Classification Unit. Member of the classification sub-group of the Voorburg Group and of the UN/expert group for the classifications. Co-operates with about fifteen CEEC to help them to build up their new system of classifications. Designed and manages the "classification server NOMENCLA" (formal structures and linguistics). emile.bruneau@insee.fr

Michel Boeda: Ecole Centrale. 27 years in INSEE. National accounts, responsible for INSEE. s publishing, former Head of the classification unit, Secretary of the French National accounts association. Member of the Voorburg group. Co-operates with about twenty CEEC and developing countries to help them to build up their new system of classifications.

Pascal Rivière. Polytechnique, ENSAE. 12 years in INSEE. Designed and developed SICORE a software for automatic coding independently of the languages involved. Head of the Harmonisation of the business surveys unit.

Roland Rousseau has just retired after 32 years in the classification unit of INSEE. His personal consultancy company will be created in June 1999. During his professional life he developed most of the economic classifications used by French statisticians and also others. During the seventies, he developed the new French system of activity and product classifications based on the association criteria and the derived classifications, participated in the building up of the occupation and social categories classification (PCS . professions et categories sociales), was a member of the UN/ISIC Rev3 development team, developed the basis of the CPA on behalf of Eurostat during the eighties and participated in the European working group which created the new European classification system. He is the living memory of the classification international specialists. rousseau.r@wanadoo.fr

LexiQuest, Inc.

LexiQuest (formerly ERLI S.A.) designs and distributes products that are used by market-leading companies to enhance the accuracy and ease-of-use of their information systems. From improving corporate information retrieval capabilities to delivering highly accurate automated email response systems, LexiQuest has been proven to deliver 3-4 times the accuracy of traditional statistical solutions and has developed specific linguistic products for classifications. The company offers a variety of products and services that can be tuned to meet the specific needs of any business environment. The LexiQuest technology products are sold directly and through OEM partners, VARs and Systems Integrators. The company employs many of the world's foremost linguistic experts. A filial of LexiQuest was created two years ago in the United States of America located in San Francisco and New York. There are about 65 employees of which 25 (in Paris) work in the R&D sector. LexiQuest has participated in several major European projects, including Genelex, a project for linguistic resources normalisation.

Alain Couillault will act as a project leader on behalf of LexiQuest. He has been working on linguistic related projects for over 10 years. His past experience includes research, design and implementation on Computer Assisted Translation Tools, Natural Language Dialogue and information Retrieval applications. He has recently worked on FacilNC, a Eurostat sponsored project to enlarge classification descriptions with professional vocabulary. Alain Couillault holds a PhD in Computational linguistics from the university of Clermont-Ferrand. alain.couillault@lexiquest.fr

Bernard Normier is the founder of LexiQuest. Spending all his professional career in IR and NLP, he is widely recognised in the linguistic community as one of the leading experts in information retrieval technologies. He has driven company development from 1977 to 1998, becoming Chief Technical Officer in 1998, at which time a new CEO joined the company to develop the business in USA and Europe. Bernard Normier personally managed several large projects in the NLP field, including Genelex (40 MF budget), which has been one of the most important contributions to the emergence of European standards in the field, and Graal, another Eureka project (50 MF) , which was the technological basis for the transformation of the company from a project-oriented model to a Software Editor business model. In June 1998, he was elected "Personality of the Year" at IDT/Net 98, a trade show with 17,000 visitors and 166 information and technology providers of Internet and Intranet applications. Bernard Normier holds a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Paris (1975).

Dominique Maret will ensure the integration of results from the Clamour project into the LexiQuest product line. He is responsible for the product and integration team within the R&D department. He has worked on several linguistic based applications, including the ALP system (writing tools and automated translation), Lexpertise Software (second language writing tools) and Eurolang (machine aided translation products). He holds a PhD in information science and applied linguistics.

Hugues de Mazancourt will be responsible for the technical feasibility of the functionalities designed during the Clamour project. Hugues de Mazancourt is responsible for LexiQuest core technology. He has been a project leader in international co-operative projects on Language Engineering and holds an engineering degree and an advanced diploma in Artificial intelligence and computational linguistics.

Antoine Ogonowski will be responsible for ensuring that linguistic resources fit the needs of the linguistic techniques required for during this project. He has worked on natural language access to relational databases, on knowledge based systems, has been a participant, project leader and manager of several international co-operative projects in Language Engineering. He holds an advanced degree in Artificial Intelligence.

Christine Reynaud will work specifically on evaluating the needs of linguistic techniques for assessing classifications and will ensure consistency across the various workpackages. She holds an advanced degree in multilingual language processing and has taught applied linguistics at the Ecole Normale Supérieure.

Laurence Zaysser will work on grammatical and semantic techniques. She heads the extraction tools team and has worked on several European projects including Genelex. She holds an advanced degree in formal linguistics.

Gaelle Recource will work on the French linguistic terminology resources required by this project. She is a linguistic engineer for LexiQuest and has been involved in various European projects, including Eurotra. She holds a PhD in Linguistics.

Lee Humphreys will be responsible for the English terminology resources needed for this project. Lee Humphreys was educated at the University of Oxford ( BA(Hons) in Philosophy and Physiology) and Edinburgh (postgraduate studies in Linguistics and Artificial Intelligence). For several years he was a member of the Computational Linguistics and Machine Translation group in the Department of Language and Linguistics at the University of Essex in the UK, where he worked on MT Evaluation and linguistic specifications for the European Community. s EUROTRA Machine Translation project. Before joining ERLI he was responsible for French-English MT development at SITE-EUROLANG (Paris) (1992-1994). He has been a CE-appointed Project Reviewer for several large European computational linguistics projects. In addition to publishing a number of articles, he has co-authored a book on MT.

Statistics Netherlands

CBS is a government institution, and falls under the responsibility of the Ministry of Economic Affairs. Its area of work is determined by the Central Commission for Statistics, an independent commission made up of representatives from government, science and society. This parliament. guarantees the independence of Statistics Netherlands and the impartiality of the information it provides.

The information Statistics Netherlands collects cover many aspects of society, ranging from macro-economic indicators such as economic growth and consumer prices, to the quality of life of individual people. To obtain this information, hundreds of surveys are conducted every year involving companies, households and private and public institutions. Statistics Netherlands is committed to the confidential treatment of individual data at its disposal. The survey results provide a wealth of information about Dutch society, and the statistical expertise and scientific analysis of these results guarantee accurate and reliable information.

The department of Statistical Methods of Statistics Netherlands is a centre of expertise in the field of survey methodology and other applied statistical methods. It carries out scientific research and provides consultancy services. The main focus of the activities of the department is making a contribution to statistical processes and products innovation within Statistics Netherlands. However, products and services are also available to other interested parties. At present the Department of Statistical Methods has 38 staff members. The department is the main participant at Statistics Netherlands in Clamour.

For Workpackages 6 - 8 two junior researchers will be required. One will be working full-time on the project for two years; the other will be working full-time on the project in the second year only. Various senior researchers are involved and will be working part-time on the project. One of their tasks is to guide the junior researchers. The names of the senior researchers involved in Workpackages 6 - 8 are given below.

Bert Kroese studied mathematics at the University of Groningen and took his PhD in Mathematical Statistics at the same university (cum laude). He worked for two years as a researcher and consulting statistician at a veterinarian institute in Lelystad. In 1996 he moved to Statistics Netherlands and has since been involved in methodological projects of different kinds. Specialisations include survey design & estimation and foundations of classification systems. In 1998-99 he was project leader of the EU Supcom project . Formalisation of enterprise activities. . This project resulted in a preliminary model to describe the activities and structure of businesses. This model is a main input to the present project. akse@cbs.nl

Peter Struijs (1958) studied business administration in Delft (the Netherlands) and at Wharton (USA). He began work in Statistics Netherlands in the field of economic classifications and then moved to the area of statistical units where he developed many of the definitions and operational rules currently applied in the central business register. He has also been in charge of statistics on business demography. In 1995, he moved to Eurostat on detachment as a national expert, where he was responsible for business registers. Returning to Statistics Netherlands in 1998, he became project manager for meta-information for the division of data collection.

Harrie van der Ven studied (Town and Country) Planning at the University of Nijmegen in the Netherlands. After his study, he worked for 5 years at Statistics Netherlands. During this period, he was involved with the preparation of a General Economic Census. He then moved to an employer. organisation as a senior adviser. In 1986 he returned to Statistics Netherlands as chief of a section involved with the preparation of Economic Censuses. Today he is head of the business register department. Recently, he has been engaged in the development of a single business register in the Netherlands.

Ad Willeboordse is a senior methodologist at Statistics Netherlands with 28 years service. He has been: a surveying statistician (as head of unit) for statistics on R&D, short term indicators, business tendency, capital investment, energy, use of computers, and environment; head of statistical business register; and head of the co-ordination department. His professional interests include conceptual aspects of (systems of) economic statistics; statistical co-ordination and harmonisation; standard classifications; metadata conceptual modelling; specialisation: statistical units (definitions and populations); classifications; and response burden (policies and measurement). He has participated in various working parties like those about business registers and statistical units. He is the main author and final editor of the EU Handbook for the design and implementation of business surveys.

Leon Willenborg studied mathematics at the University of Nijmegen in The Netherlands, specialising in probability and geometry. After graduation (MS degree), he served as a reserve officer in the Royal Dutch Navy, where he spent most of his time in a terminal ballistics research group doing work in statistics and computer programming. He then moved to Statistics Netherlands where he worked as a researcher and consultant, mainly in the areas of sampling, data editing and questionnaire structures, in the Department of Statistical Methods. From one of the research projects in which he was involved he produced a PhD. thesis leading to a doctorate from the University of Brabant. He is working today as a senior researcher and project leader, mainly in the area of statistical confidentiality. He was the project manager of the SDC project that was executed under FP4, and that, among other things, developed ARGUS, a software package to assist analysts in producing safe microdata and tables. lwlg@cbs.nl

Hans van Hooff studied Town and Country Planning at the University of Amsterdam. Since 1978, he has worked in the field of economic classifications, involving activity classifications and statistical units particularly. He was involved in the creation of the 1993 version of the Dutch activity classification based on NACE with a fifth national level. He has considerable practical experience of the use of activity classifications. Recently, he has also been involved in methodological projects relating to the foundations of classification systems and to the creation of statistical units from legal units.

Danmarks Statistik

DST is Denmark's central statistical office and is responsible for the co-ordination of all official statistics concerning Denmark and Danish society. These statistics cover a broad spectrum of topics within the areas of population, business, industry, the environment and the economy. The Act on Statistics Denmark gives an independent Board of Directors the responsibility to determine the institution's work programme, thus allowing Statistics Denmark to operate independently of Government control. The Director General is the chairman of the Board. The other members are appointed by the Minister of Economic Affairs. Budget planning and staffing fall within the Minister's jurisdiction, but it is the Board which has the final say when it comes to prioritising the tasks in the statistical production.

Karsten Stetkaer has worked in Danmarks Statistik since 1972 and is currently director of enterprise statistics. Previously he was head of business statistics, where his responsibilities included redevelopment of the business register (1989-95), head of the databank division (1988-89), responsible for integration of administrative and statistical data (1984-88), and worked on developing and building a new national accounts system (1972-84). He holds a Masters Degree in Economics and worked for three years for IBM prior to joining the statistical office. He has been a TES course leader in the field of business registers and acted as consultant in Slovenia, FYR of Macedonia and the Czech and Slovak Republics. He has represented the statistical office regularly at international meetings.

Soren Andersen is a Danish citizen, born in 1968. He is fluent in English and holds a Master's degree in Political Science from the University of Aarhus, specialising in methods of sociological research (1989 - 1996). Since 1997, he has been employed by Statistics Denmark and is currently Head of Section in the Business Register, dealing specifically with quality measurement of activity data in the Business Register and information and on communication with the users of the Register. Prior to this he was employed by the Danish Ministry of Defence from 1996 to 1997. International experience comprises membership of the NACE/CPA working group in Eurostat, participation in an ECE meeting in Geneva on Business Registers and in a TES course in Business Registers. ssa@dst.dk

Mai Wessing is a Danish citizen, born in 1967. In addition to her mother tongue, she is fluent in English. She has a Master's degree in Economics from the University of Copenhagen . September 1996. Since February 1998, she has been employed by Statistics Denmark and is currently Head of Section in the division for Business Structure, dealing specifically with preserving and developing the Business Register. mhw@dst.dk

Peter Larsen was born in 1939. He is a fluent English speaker. He holds a Master degree in economics and statistics from University of Copenhagen 1964. He was employed by Ministry of Social Affairs, Copenhagen 1965-1966, undertook a UN assignment in Statistical Office of Swaziland 1966-1968, worked in Statistics Denmark 1968-1970 and for Hoff & Overgaard, Copenhagen 1970-1971. Since 1971, he has worked in Statistics Denmark. Presently, he is Head of Section. He is an expert in enterprise statistics, business registers and economic classifications (activities, goods and services). International missions include Slovenia, Syria, Egypt, Belarus and Greenland. He has participated in several ECE meetings in Geneva on business registers and activity classifications and is a member of NACE/CPA working group in Luxembourg. He teaches business registers and economic classifications on TES courses. pel@dst.dk

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This page last revised: Wednesday, 24 January 2001