Machine Learning in Official Statistics

Abstract

In the first half of 2018, the Federal Statistical Office of Germany (Destatis) carried out a "Proof of Concept Machine Learning" as part of its Digital Agenda. A major component of this was surveys on the use of machine learning methods in official statistics, which were conducted at selected national and international statistical institutions and among the divisions of Destatis. It was of particular interest to find out in which statistical areas and for which tasks machine learning is used and which methods are applied. This paper is intended to make the results of the surveys publicly accessible.