United Nations Statistics Division Bringing Information to the World

UN Statistics Division - Data Services  60 + years of data collection and dissemination  Collaborating with national statistical systems  Enhancing availability and visibility of official country statistics on a global basis  Promoting accessibility, searchability and open access of data  Investing in new approaches in data exchange and data dissemination

Bringing Information to the World  Internet-based data service system  Making UN databases freely available  Pulling together and organizing international databases to allow easy access and searchability  Promoting national data dissemination  Building a global data dissemination infrastructure

Project background  Common Database (CDB) = First attempt to pull together and organize international databases  2005 SIDA project on “Statistics as a Global Public Good” = providing free and easy access to data resources of the UN System  UNdata = decentralized approach, federated data system, databases linked through a search engine

Bringing Information to the World Quick facts 24 Databases Country/area profiles 6 Glossaries 60 Million records UNdata partners

Site Usage – Google Analytics Usage statistics from 1 March 2008 – 31 May 2009, Source: Visitors Traffic sources

User Communication

Recent development  New search algorithm improving the series ranking  SDMX format supported  Twitter integration  Announcing updates  Educating the users  Facebook presence  Country profiles and country data services linked from home

Plans for the future  Increase data and metadata availability  Improving the interface  Organizing series by “topic” in the explorer  Offering data visualization  Further improving ranking and search capabilities  Improving back-end administration

“... very much in line with current web site technologies.” “What a fantastic website! User-friendly, fast, complete.” “The design is very clear and intuitive” “The UNdata portal is a great idea: a ‘single statistics’ window.” “Congratulations on rolling out this simple, elegant and data rich portal site.” “Thanks for opening your databases to the general public and improving your query methods.” A glimpse of what users are saying…