STATISTISK SENTRALBYRAA

Their core work

Statistics Norway (SSB) is Norway's national statistical authority, responsible for producing official statistics on the Norwegian economy, society, and environment. In European research projects, they function primarily as a data provider and methodological partner — contributing access to comprehensive administrative microdata covering Norwegian firms, households, and public institutions, alongside rigorous statistical methods developed over decades of official measurement work. Their H2020 participation spans two distinct domains: environmental-economic accounting (integrating natural capital into national accounts) and economic productivity measurement (quantifying intangible assets and digitalisation effects using firm-level microdata). They are typically sought out by consortia that need a credible, methodologically consistent national data node for cross-country comparisons.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

SSB's earliest H2020 project (MAIA, 2018) placed them firmly in environmental-economic accounting — the challenge of giving monetary or physical value to ecosystems so they appear in national accounts. By 2019, with GLOBALINTO, the focus shifted toward the digital and knowledge economy: measuring intangible assets, organisational capital, ICT investment, and ageing labour forces using firm-level microdata. This is not a reversal but an expansion — both domains share the same underlying capability (official statistical microdata and national accounts methodology) applied to different measurement gaps. The trajectory points clearly toward productivity economics and the statistical measurement of digitalisation, which is a pressing policy priority across the EU.

SSB is moving toward becoming a specialist partner for projects that need to quantify the knowledge economy — digital capital, innovation investment, and productivity measurement — using official administrative data, making them highly relevant for any consortium building an EU-wide evidence base on economic transformation.

How they like to work

SSB participates exclusively as a consortium member and has never served as a project coordinator in H2020, consistent with how national statistics offices typically engage in research — contributing data and methods rather than leading scientific agendas. Despite only two projects, they accumulated 27 unique partners across 13 countries, indicating membership in large, multi-country consortia rather than small bilateral collaborations. Working with SSB means gaining a credible institutional data partner with government-grade data access, but not a project management or coordination hub.

With 27 unique consortium partners across 13 countries drawn from just two projects, SSB connects into broad, pan-European research networks. Their geographic footprint is European, with natural anchoring in the Nordic and EEA region given Norway's close alignment with EU statistical frameworks.

What sets them apart

What sets SSB apart from universities or research institutes is institutional data access — they hold longitudinal, population-covering administrative registers on Norwegian firms, workers, and households that no academic partner can replicate. For projects requiring cross-country microdata harmonisation, SSB provides a methodologically rigorous, legally compliant Norwegian data node that meets Eurostat standards. Their dual coverage of environmental accounting and economic productivity measurement is also unusual, giving them credibility in both green economy and digital economy research streams.

Highlights from their portfolio

• GLOBALINTO
  The largest of SSB's two H2020 projects (€257,500) and the most strategically relevant — measuring intangible assets in firm-level microdata addresses a recognized gap in EU productivity accounting, and SSB's administrative data was a core asset for the Norwegian component.
• MAIA
  An early commitment to ecosystem accounting that positioned SSB at the intersection of environmental science and national accounts — a combination that remains rare among European statistical offices.