The preliminary recoding procedure from Ateco 2022 to Ateco 2025

On 1 January 2025, the revised Italian classification of economic activities, Ateco 2025, entered into force. To implement it for both statistical and administrative purposes, an automated procedure recodes enterprises according to the new scheme. This process relies on a mapping and operational correspondence table that automatically resolves one-to-many cases between Ateco 2022 and Ateco 2025. This research work is intended to describe the process of development of the above-mentioned tool including: i) the application of an automatic matching algorithm that compares the text strings headings and inclusion notes of the two classifications Ateco 2022 and Ateco 2025, ii) the analysis of the SEA Survey of Economic Activities results and iii) the involvement of classification experts. Results have shown that, in the absence of any kind of information describing the economic activity at individual level, the developed tool is very useful to make a preliminary large scale recoding of registers and archives of enterprises maintained by various bodies.