Data and IT-Management (DIM)
Service Department
Tasks
The task of the Data and IT Management (Daten- und IT-Management, DIM) business unit is to ideally support the research of the IAB (Institute for Employment Research) by providing data and IT services.
Data Management
Data Management is responsible for processing, anonymizing and providing data from administrative processes for empirical analyses. The sources are, for instance, data from employment agencies or basic security benefit institutions, or the employment notifications companies send to the social insurance agencies. The information gained from this forms one of the essential data bases for labour market policy research in Germany.
The essential "data products" . Anfroffered have been collected in a catalogue. Please direct inquiries in this regard to the IAB.DIM@iab.de mailbox.
In the field of data provision, DIM, among other things, assumes two functions which the other data providers of the BA (Federal Employment Agency), i.e., the Statistical Data Centre (Datenzentrum der Statistic) and the Research Data Centre (Forschungsdatenzentrum, FDZ), do not provided in this form:
Longitudinal data
DIM merges information from different sources into longitudinal data bases which satisfy all the requirements of data protection. In contrast to the data from the Statistical Data Centre of the BA, which usually allow carrying out source-specific cross-sectional analyses of data on an aggregate level, DIM data products allow following up on individual employment histories over longer periods of time.
Project-specifically processed data extracts
The DIM service offering provides – unlike the offer of the FDZ of the BA – data access which can be tailored to a specific project. While the FDZ, whose offer of process data largely builds on DIM data products, usually provides standard samples, DIM provides data extracts that have been processed in close coordination with the respective research project according to specific requirements. In particular, microeconomic evaluation research on the effect of individual laws and regulations on the labour market within and outside of the IAB depends on the data products and the access services provided by the DIM.
IT Management
IT Management is responsible for supplying the IAB researchers with hardware, software and support going beyond the standard services provided by the Federal Employment Agency . Due to the growing scope and the increasing complexity of labour market data, the equipment of the work stations must be constantly reviewed and, if necessary, further developed. Therefore, DIM staff are continuously monitoring new software developments on the market so as to recognize and provide innovative research solutions quickly. If standard products are not available on the market, in exceptional cases, DIM develops IAB-specific applications based on the appropriate conceptual expertise. Click here for more information about the IT services in the IAB.
The teams in DIM
The organization and work processes of DIM are designed to handle jobs quickly and efficiently. There are four operational teams:
