Why a forum?
The European Statistics User Forum (ESUF) was set up through Action 1.2 of the DIGICOM project, as a social media platform for expert users of European statistics.
What was the forum used for?
The ESUF was mainly used for providing a forum for feedback (questions & suggestions) regarding Eurostat experimental statistics.
The ESUF was also used for discussing EU-SILC scientific use files.
Why is the forum offline?
The average level of activity on the ESUF turned out to be much lower than expected. This was likely due to a number of factors:
- The target population of experts is rather small, making it very hard to reach the "critical mass" needed to arrive at a dynamic discussion.
- The technical barrier (requiring users to register to the ESUF before posting a question or a comment) may have prevented users to post.
- The visibility (all posts shown in the public domain) may have prevented users from posting questions and suggestions.
Therefore, the ESUF was taken offline during the last quarter of 2020.
Where can I now go to discuss?
Experimental statistics
For experimental statistics, it is now possible to directly submit questions via e-mail to the Eurostat teams in charge of the different experimental statistics products. This approach removes the (2) technical and (3) visibility barriers, and may thus increase the level of user interaction. The different e-mail addresses is shown in the "feedback" field at the top of the right-hand column of each experimental statistics product in the Eurostat experimental statistics section:
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/experimental-statistics/
EU-SILC scientific use files
For the EU-SILC scientific use files, a dedicated discussion forum has been set up on the CROS portal at:
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/cros/EU-SILC-SUF