The System of social statistical datasets of Statistics Netherlands: An integral approach to the production of register-based social statistics

More and more countries are using register data to replace traditional Censuses. Moreover, official statistics as well as research are increasingly based on register data or combinations of survey and register data. Register-based statistics offer wonderful new opportunities. At the same time, they require a new approach to how data are processed and managed. In this article, we present the System of social statistical datasets (SSD), a system of interlinked and standardized registers and surveys. All production processes within Statistics Netherlands that pertain to social or spatial statistics converge in the SSD, which thus constitutes a shared output-oriented system. The SSD contains a wealth of information on persons, households, jobs, benefits, pensions, education, hospitalizations, crime reports, dwellings, vehicles and more. In the Netherlands it is the most important source for official social statistics and, because the data are available on request by means of remote access, also very popular in the social sciences. This article describes the contents of the SSD as well as the underlying process and organization, and demonstrates its possibilities.