UNECE Statistical Division Slide 115 May 2008 Open Discussion Work Session on Statistical Dissemination and Communication May 2008 Facilitator: Gina Pearson (U.S. Energy Information Administration)

UNECE Statistical Division Slide 215 May 2008 Discussion Questions  What are the major themes that emerged during the course of the conference?  What are the important outstanding questions or issues? Which topics especially warrant further discussion?

UNECE Statistical Division Slide 315 May 2008 Major Themes  How to successfully serve so many diverse (divergent) audiences / user groups. Developing & managing a customer feedback strategy / approach  Importance of customers and stakeholders – who are they and what are their needs?  Product development – related to user feedback  Challenges of changing environment, both internal (eg moving from having only a press secretary to a public relations office) and external (adapting product suite and web site to suit changing client groups and needs)

UNECE Statistical Division Slide 415 May 2008 Major Themes  Methods for preventing errors from leaving the office / proofreading and how to deal with them if they do  Quality assurance (like a future topic on this provided we don’t duplicate work in other groups)  Political independence and equal treatment of media

UNECE Statistical Division Slide 515 May 2008 Major Themes  Keeping up with the latest communications and technology tools, techniques, etc (RSS, Blogs, pod & video casting, wikis, etc). Data visualization Need to remember focus on communication not technical aspects  The need for standard structure(s) for data, data integration, data commonality, etc. Metadata is a recurrent issue.

UNECE Statistical Division Slide 615 May 2008 Major Themes  Requests for and confidentiality of data  Reconcile differences in data available at regional and national level  Education / statistical literacy  Role of dissemination vs communication – overlap and differences?

UNECE Statistical Division Slide 715 May 2008 Questions & Issues  One of our stated goals is to ‘train’ statisticians & subject specialists to design tables & write reports that tell interesting stories. Is there thought of working with meta-data writers to write for non-statistical audiences?  What are the key functional branches (teams) needed for the communications arm of a national statistical organization?  How can web governance be integrated with web content?

UNECE Statistical Division Slide 815 May 2008 Questions & Issues  How has the 24/7 news cycle provided challenges and opportunities for statistical communications organizations?  How much influence should stakeholders have concerning the inclusion of content questions and format?

UNECE Statistical Division Slide 915 May 2008 Questions & Issues  Should we create an international statistics ‘access license’ (standards involving identification of source, protection of original data, conditions for re-use and re-distribution)and, if so, how?

UNECE Statistical Division Slide 1015 May 2008 Questions & Issues  ABS is looking at a system for licensing its data on the internet; legal issues and IT issues are being looked at. Are other agencies considering using watermarks etc for this. So any lessons? (Australia)

UNECE Statistical Division Slide 1115 May 2008 Questions & Issues  Dissemination of sensitive group-specific results (SGSR) – from Heinrich Brungger: Concerning the issue of release of small aggregates, do you have special rules or a special policy for SGSR? If yes, what are they? What type of comments did you add to the last release of a SGSR? What was the reaction by media and users? Were some of these interpretations erroneous, and if yes did the NSO react publicly?

UNECE Statistical Division Slide 1215 May 2008 Questions & Issues  To charge or not to charge What are the price policies of other statistical organizations and how does this differ depending on the category of user? Nat’l Statistical Service of Greece – charges only for tailor-made data & printed pubs, but special discounts for students & universities, free for public sector organizations Do organizations charge for metadata? How much?

UNECE Statistical Division Slide 1315 May 2008 Questions & Issues  Pre-release of information To pre-release or not to pre-release? Pre-release to whom and why? Market-moving information – the exception? Need for guidelines? Role of technology?

UNECE Statistical Division Slide 1415 May 2008 Questions & Issues  Can we use the disscomm listserv to have discussions in between meetings? How can we achieve that?