Project description

The national contact points (focal points) act as interfaces between EFSA (European Food Safety Authority) and national food safety authorities, research institutions, consumers and other interest groups. EFSA supports the focal points in financing various work packages and projects. This promotes the exchange of information between the risk assessment agencies of the Member States and EFSA. This exchange includes specific tasks and projects, such as improving data transmission, EU-wide coordinated risk communication and initiatives to further develop risk assessment methods.

Different data formats and levels of detail in the national systems - compared to the EFSA data models - mean that manual transformation steps are regularly required to prepare and adapt survey data for transmission to EFSA.

As part of the project, the Data Management Department analysed data flows in two data domains - contaminant data and data on foodborne outbreaks (FBOs) - in detail. A standardised questionnaire was used to record all process steps, actors involved, data formats and systems used. The analysis was carried out in close collaboration with an external project management company.

For the FBO data domain, the data flow for collecting data on food-borne outbreaks in one year for the European Union One Health Zoonoses Report was analysed in detail. The topics queried concerned the individual players in the data flow - from entry into the Austrian epidemiological reporting system (EMS) to data cleansing, mapping and data transfer to EFSA. Information was also collected on the data format and the programmes or data models used in the individual process steps.

For the contaminant data, the processes for querying, processing and transferring the occurrence data of various contaminants in food were scrutinised.

Benefits of the project

The results provide a sound basis for developing targeted solutions for the most problematic steps in data preparation in the future. This reduces both personnel costs and the susceptibility to errors. As the project was carried out in parallel in several EU member states, common challenges can be identified and Europe-wide standards for more efficient data flows can be developed.

Further information

Country Report of Austria for Foodborne Outbreaks business data collection

Country Report of Austria for Chemical Contaminants Occurrence business data collection

European Summary report