KOSTRA

KOSTRA is an abbreviation for "Municipality-State-Reporting". The KOSTRA-project started in 1995 as project with four municipalities as participants. This pilot developed a first version of a new system for electronic data reporting and publishing. After the first pilot the government decided that all local governments should report according to the new system. After that the number of municipalities has increased gradually, and the first full scale reporting took place in March 2002. Since July 2002 KOSTRA has been in the operating phase.

KOSTRA focuses on two purposes:

• To give better information about the municipalities, both for the central and for the local governments. This includes a more coherent data collection, which makes it possible to combine data from many sources, for example combination of data on accounts and data on services and personnel. The focus has also been on comparability between municipalities, to make benchmarking possible as a part of the management process. And timeliness is vital. Information is collected in February and the first figures are published in March. In this publishing only electronic tests check the reliability of data. Revised figures are published in June.
• More efficient reporting. All data reporting from the municipalities are electronic, by use of electronic forms or file extracts. And the same data should be collected only once, even if it is used for many purposes.

The publishing includes a number of fixed indicators on the municipalities' priorities, productivity and the coverage of needs. It is structured to enable the comparisons of one municipality with the average for the comparable group of municipalities, the region or the country. The publishing also includes detailed data that enables the users to construct their own indicators and tables, by use of several programmes as for example Excel or PC-Axis. Data may be presented on maps using PC-Axis in combination with PX-Map.