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On this page: Background | Terms of Reference | Organisation of the Group
BACKGROUND
The Ottawa Group is a city group set up in 1994 under the auspices of the United Nations Statistical Commission. It provides a forum for specialists and practitioners who work for, or are advisors to, national statistical agencies or international organisations to exchange their experiences and thoughts on crucial problems of measuring price change. The Group’s strength is based on its professional authority, independence, and usefulness to national and international statistical agencies. The Group meets about every two years.
TERMS OF REFERENCE
Without avoiding theoretical issues, the focus of the Group is on applied research, particularly though not exclusively, in the area of consumer price indices. The Group examines advantages and disadvantages of various concepts, methods and procedures in the context of realistic operational environments, supported by concrete examples whenever possible. Only specialists actively involved in the application of the principles relating to the topics under discussion are invited to the Group’s meetings as active participants. The proceedings from the sessions are edited and diffused. They contain the presented papers and the most important elements of discussions. They also include the Group’s recommendations when a preponderant opinion clearly emerges from the discussions, or, if this is not the case, a summary of the discordant opinions with balanced commentary.
The Group may also assemble and publish compendia of materials related to specific topics of price statistics, composed of papers and of summaries of discussions from several meetings. Each of these publications could constitute chapters of a Handbook describing best practices in the given area of price statistics.
ORGANISATION OF THE GROUP
The Group has a Steering Committee, which ensures both the continuity and evolution of the Group’s activities and the coordination with other international activities on price statistics, such as the Expert Meetings on CPIs jointly organised by the UNECE and the ILO, and the Intersecretariat Working Group on Price Statistics (IWGPS). The Committee comprises representatives of the agencies that host the Group’s recent and upcoming meetings, others agreed to by the membership, a representative of the organising committee for the Expert Meetings on CPIs and a representative of the IWGPS. The representative of the Australian Bureau of Statistics is currently serving as Executive Secretary.
The Committee outlines long-term activity plans for the Group and proposes topics for the meetings. Meetings are organised in principle about once every two years, with topics established in advance for forthcoming meetings. The scheduling of the meetings and the selection of topics are coordinated with the IWGPS and the Expert Meetings on CPIs. The Committee extends invitations to selected agencies and individual experts for the submission of papers on the agreed topics and is responsible for the selection of papers to be presented. Their authors are invited to the meeting, possibly with other specialists whose contribution to the discussion on a specific topic is considered useful. The number of active participants is kept limited for the sake of efficient discussion; however the host agency may invite a reasonable number of additional participants.
Although the meetings may be divided into sessions, these are not organised in a parallel manner. Each session is devoted to one, clearly defined topic with a designated moderator who is also responsible for producing a summary of the discussions and recording any recommendations.
The host agency provides facilities for the meeting and arranges for the collation of papers and summaries of proceedings. The participants bear the cost of travel, accommodation and subsistence during the meeting.
Information about the Group and copies of papers and summaries of proceedings are available on the Internet. The agency providing secretariat services (currently the Australian Bureau of Statistics) is responsible for maintaining a Web-site open to the public (www.ottawagroup.org). The Steering Committee may also decide to edit and periodically release compendia on selected topics, whenever it is warranted by the status of available materials. | 