Contour Components has created a BI system for designing social benefits

2022: Using Contour BI to design welfare benefits.

On July 19, 2022, the IT company Contour Components announced the creation of a product that will provide additional analytical capabilities in the development of social support measures for the population, allowing them to be assessed in terms of effectiveness and targeting. This will help assign the most appropriate support measures to those categories of citizens who need it most.

The project was implemented on the instructions and under the leadership of Rosstat, according to the methodology of the Office of Living Standards Statistics and Household Surveys. The goal is to create a tool that allows you to quickly develop the most effective and targeted support measures in terms of both improving the standard of living of the most vulnerable groups of the population and allocating budget funds. To assess the proposed solutions, the "Poverty Level" indicator is used: the more people get out of poverty when a certain measure is appointed, the more effective it is considered.

The challenges our country has faced in recent years, including the COVID-19 epidemic, have had a significant impact on people's lives. The early introduction of new social support measures was required. Rosstat has a special database based on the results of selective observations of the income of Russians, which contains detailed information on various groups of the population, including those at risk: large, poor, unemployed, workers in areas affected by the lockdown, doctors and medical personnel. Until some time, we successfully used this data when miscalculating additional financial resources to help certain categories of citizens. But then we came to the conclusion that we are unable to keep up with the development of initiatives, and a more in-depth approach to miscalculations is required, told Elena Frolova, Head of the Department of Statistics of Living Standards and Household Surveys of Rosstat.

In this situation, it was decided to create a new type of statistical product by Rosstat - a specialized service for modeling various scenarios for providing social support measures.

To support different categories of citizens, there are many types of social benefits in the country. In regions, the types and sizes of payments may vary. This complicated the work of benefit designers and made it difficult to assess the effectiveness of the measures taken. Therefore, Rosstat set us a task - to create a product that, based on the available data, allows you to configure and compare various scenarios for helping target groups and gives results in the form of understandable infographics, told Vladimir Nekrasov, General Director of Contour Components.

The development was based on a platform Contour BI for collecting, storages publishing and analyzing data, allowing you to create powerful corporate or state analytical systems without a programming short time. - In OLAPserver minutes, Contour performs multidimensional calculations of scenarios in the context of regions, dozens of characteristics of people and types of assistance measures, displaying results in interactive information panels - visual and easy to understand. For analysis in the micro-modeling system, the results of the Selective Observation of Household Incomes and Participation in Social Programs for 2021 conducted by Rosstat are used. By choosing a type of benefit in a specific region, you can see how many people receive it. Conversely, by establishing a complex filter on the characteristics of a certain population group and choosing the criteria for the support measure being developed, it is possible to assess how the proposed measure will affect the well-being of people.

By developing new measures to help a certain category of citizens in one of the regions (for example, single mothers in Tyumen), the expert can find out what share of representatives of this group is below the poverty line, what are the incomes of these people, and how effective the support measure being developed will be. By proposing and comparing different scenarios (changing the size of existing benefits or creating new ones) and comparing them with budget capabilities, experts can choose the optimal type of assistance that will increase the standard of living of citizens, explained Vladimir Nekrasov.

The implementation of the project took two years and cost 10 million rubles in 2020 and 7 million in 2021. As of July 2022, a working group was formed for testing and subsequent implementation of the system, which included representatives of the Ministry of Labor and Social Development, the All-Russian Research Institute of Labor of the Ministry of Labor of Russia and Rosstat.

2021

Using Contour BI to Process Census Results

The first stage of the All-Russian Population Census (VPN-2020, which was originally supposed to take place in 2020) has ended in Russia. Formally, it was 99% of the estimated population. As the head of Rosstat Pavel Malkov explained, this figure is obtained by direct addition from all sources: from census takers, the State Public services portal, a specialized contingent (military units, prisons) and administrative data (used to supplement the collected information). This became known on November 22, 2021.

According to Malkov, now the collected information will be processed, including in order to remove duplicate and "dirty" data. The first operational data on the population will be published at the end of January 2022, and the full results - by the end of 2022.

VPN-2020 was the first census to use digital technology. Scribes instead of traditional ones went with tablets, and it was also possible to correspond using the Portal of Public Services.

The operator of the digitalization of the census was appointed "Rostelecom." He purchased 360 thousand tablets for census takers, operating on the basis of the domestic operating system "Aurora" (the developer company "Aurora" is also under the control of Rostelecom). (give a link to this project pzhl)

Rosstat also uses the Contur-BI business analytics system for the census, the license for the use of which the agency acquired from Kontur-Komponents for 16 million rubles. The system consists of three modules. The first module stores data on preparation for the census, the second - data on the progress of collecting information about the population, the third - visual information about the process of processing already collected materials (both using a tablet and using the Portal of Public Services), the third module - visual information about the process of processing already collected materials.

The BI system will also be responsible for "cleaning" the data obtained during the census. The presence of several sources of information led to the doubling of the results obtained: for example, a person could independently correspond through census points, and his relatives rewrite him through the Portal of Public Services. The task of "cleaning" the obtained data is complicated by the fact that the census was anonymous.

Data cleaning is the identification and deletion of duplicates, filling in missing fields, correcting errors in data types (for example, a number contains a symbol), correcting or deleting unreliable values ​ ​ (age 999 years or a non-existent address), - explained Vladimir Nekrasov, CNewsgenderector "Contour - Components." - Most of such errors are not allowed by the data entry program, for this there are rules for formal and logistic control, but some of the errors can only be identified by post-control.

BI is the final tool, in the context of data cleaning it is an expert tool, in which many errors become visible instantaneous, for example, incorrect addresses, voids are grouped and become obvious at first glance, "Nekrasov continued. - Using the functionality of matanalysis (mean square deviation, variance), abnormal deviations can be detected. Also, multidimensional conditional formatting rules are used for data quality control, when incorrect or suspicious numbers are highlighted with a color or symbol.

According to Vladimir Nekrasov, the publication of the census results will be carried out in several ways: books with many publication tables for eternal storage, online publication of the results in interactive information panels, microdata for researchers. The BI platform will be used to publish the results in the form of analytical results and dashboards. In them, the results will be displayed in the form of interactive maps, graphs, various diagrams. This will allow the user to quickly and deeply understand the structure and dynamics of the country's population in all possible sections^[1].

Develop concept and configure dashboards for key socio-economic indicators

The company Contour Components Bureau of Economic Analysis Foundation signed a contract on the topic "Developing a concept and setting up information panels for key social economic indicators based on the BI platform." Rosstat This was reported on July 21, 2021 to Kontur Components.

Kontur Components consulting services will be financed by the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development within the framework of the project "Development of the State Statistics System - 2." The work will be carried out in the interests of Rosstat.

In accordance with the contract, Kontur Components will develop a "Concept for publishing key socio-economic indicators in the form of information panels created on the basis of the Rosstat BI platform" and an existing prototype of interactive information panels publishing the main socio-economic indicators of the country.

Since 2019, the BI platform of Rosstat has been the Contour BiI platform developed by Contour Components.

Rosstat, like all national statistical institutions of the world, publishes statistics data in the form Excel of tables,, PDF files static HTML pages. The development of the information technology skills of statistics users requires a transition to interactive information panels that combine multidimensional computing based on - OLAP technology, high interactivity and rich data visualization.

The use of BI technologies for publishing data and the development of such methods of publishing data will allow users to improve the quality of work with official statistics, provide state management bodies and civil society with data in visual form using modern visualization methods, with the ability to analyze data, implement various requests, summarize and detail data.