1. STATISTICAL METADATA ON THE INTERNET REVISITED Hans Viggo Sæbø, Statistics Norway hvs@ssb.no

2. Guidelines for statistical metadata on the Internet  Adopted in 1998  Followed up in 1999  Handbook in 2000 (Statistical Standards and Studies no. 52)  Revisited by checking web-sites in 2003

3. Quality and metadata  The users define quality  What is quality in statistics?  Relevance and completeness  Accuracy  Timeliness and punctuality  Comparability and coherence  Accessibility and clarity  Improvement requires improvements in processes  Documentation (metadata) is necessary, both for the users (relevance, accessibility and clarity) and the producers (efficiency) On Internet: Metadata = Structured documentation

4. Types of metadata  Metadata for the users  Search and navigation (discovery metadata)  Interpretation  Processing  Metadata for producers  Process documentation for monitoring, control and improvements  Metadata for data providers  To provide correct data in efficient format  Quality information (overlapping items above)

5. Guidelines from 1998  Search and navigation  General information (sitemap, f.a.q, descriptions, contacts and links)  Subject matter classification  Key words  Search engine  Interpretation  “Table explanations” (documentation in headings, rows, columns)  “Footnotes”  Standard symbols  Contact points  Processing  Formats for downloading and processing  Possible limitations for further use  + Possible information on production and quality!

6. Improvement issues  General: Organisation of metadata  Search and navigation  Key words  Interpretation  Standard symbols  Structured information on production and quality  Linkage: Metadata and data

7. Examples  More or less randomly selected examples/countries to illustrate:  Different types of metadata and organisation issues  Systematic approaches – with or without direct link from the statistics

15. Conclusions  Minimum guidelines are largely met, small improvements can be done  Discovery metadata are increasingly important, but how and where to find the tools is an issue  Systematic approaches should be promoted – metadata should be directly linked to statistics  Several layers (not treated explicitly in the paper)  The quality of metadata – updating!  An efficient metadata system requires linking of existing systems