The official site of Italy's central bank

Remote Processing System BIRD

The Bank of Italy's BIRD system allows processing of data collected through its Surveys, while protecting the confidentiality of the individual data.

Databases currently available include:

- the Survey of Industrial and Service Firms (since 1984)
- the Business Outlook Survey of Industrial and Service Firms.

Users carry out their statistical and econometric analyses without having direct access to the micro data; they send an e-mail containing a program written in one of the prescribed languages and the system sends back an e-mail with the results of the calculations.

Use of the BIRD system is subject to the Bank of Italy accepting a request for the issue of a user license. Authorized users receive detailed instructions on how to submit programs for processing.

Authors who refer in their publications to results obtained with the BIRD system are required to cite the source (e.g. "Banca d'Italia, Survey of Industrial and Service Firms"); however, they may not involve the Bank of Italy in any way since they are entirely and exclusively responsible for the use of the data.

In order to permit the collection of bibliographic material on the Survey of Industrial and Service Firms, authors are required to send a copy of the research work carried out using the BIRD system to: Banca d'Italia, Servizio Statistiche Economiche e Finanziarie, Divisione Indagini Campionarie, Via Nazionale 91, 00184 ROMA or to the following e-mail address: studi.rms@bancaditalia.it.

Requests for additional information may also be sent to the same addresses.

Research work sent to the Bank of Italy must be accompanied by the form that can be obtained below, duly filled in, or by a text file containing the bibtex headings of the work.