Funding Research in Data Warehousing and Knowledge Discovery EPROS: The European Plan for Research in Official Statistics

This paper discusses: (1) the challenges that the European Statistical System (ESS) faces as the result of the recent appearance of phenomena such as the information society and the new economy, and (2) the extent to which new technological developments in data warehousing, knowledge discovery and extensive use of the internet can contribute to successfully meeting these challenges. Two specific issues are considered: the network nature of the ESS, and the new ways of producing statistics that reinforce the needs for research applied to statistics in domains such as data integration, distributed databases, EDI, automated data capture, analytical tools and dissemination. A historical overview is given of research activities financed by the European Commission as well as their relevance for DaWaK2000. A primary goal of this paper is to provide information about relevant research within the European Statistical System, and to invite the scientific community to participate actively in upcoming calls for proposals and calls for tender financed under the IST programme to solve the urgent needs for timely and high-quality statistics.