Data Dissemination in the Brazilian Institute of Geography

and Statistics

Working Session on Emerging Trends and Best Practices in Data Dissemination

New York - 3rd March, 2006

Background

The majority of information used to get to the public in an indirect manner, that is:

(a) By means of communication through a journalistic language, especially that which affected all persons´ lives (Price Indexes, GDP, Unemployment Rate, etc. )

(b) Through a third party in publications partially reproducing the information, as in analytic or didactic texts, etc.

(c) By means of the Institute’s call center.

WEB Page - The first steps

The first steps in the elaboration of a WEB page were taken with institutional information, conjuncture indexes and synthesis of the most recent statistical information in HTML pages. From that point, we verify an outstanding growth in this communication channel.

Due to Institutional decision, a policy of free

dissemination of all products in Internet was adopted since 2001.

Today, we can notice the success of the decisions that were taken at that time.

The Current Scenario

Users

0

2 000 000

4 000 000

6 000 000

8 000 000

10 000 000

12 000 000

1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005

Users: 320,835 in 1997 and 10,057,236 in 2005.

The Current Scenario

Pageviews: 1,873,665 in 1997 and 835,017,975 in 2005.

Pageviews

0100 000 000200 000 000300 000 000400 000 000500 000 000600 000 000700 000 000800 000 000900 000 000

1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005

The Current Scenario

Downloads: 14,169 in 1997 and 1,831,764 in 2005.

Downloads

0

500 000

1 000 000

1 500 000

2 000 000

2 500 000

1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005

The Current Scenario

Internet – The Institution Web site

The Web page contents

IBGE Web page has 43,411 pages. It is organized by themes or by surveys.

Database Multidimensional Statistical Database – BME Cidades@ Interactive Maps Municipalities Profile Aggregated Statistical Tables (SIDRA)

The Web page contents Thematic Channels

Brazil in Synthesis “IBGE 7 to 12” IBGE Teen

Millennium Development Goals

The Web page contents

Products and Services Library IBGE Catalog Virtual Shop IBGE text mode IBGE Wap Electronic Questionnaires

The Web page contents

Historical Contents Brazil – 500 Years of Settlement 20th Century Statistics Institutional Memory

The Web page contents

Projects and Entities Statistical Classifications (Concla) European Community and Mercosur Confest/Confege (National Meeting of Producers and

Users) ENCE (National School of Statistics Sciences)

The Web page contents

Download: 35,060 files are available for download. Data are available for download at the Web site at the moment when they are published.

Dissemination calendars on the website in advance

Two kinds of calendars put on the website in the end of each year for the next year one shows release dates of the annual and

special surveys

other covers the regular monthly and quarterly surveys

Any alteration to a pre-announced release date being made public as early as possible

Comments

In a country with continental dimensions such as Brazil, composed by 27 states and 5,561 municipalities, there were few media which received our releases or any communication at all, except those ones which came from news agencies.

In Brazil, 16,3% of the households have computer and only 12,2% have web access in their households.

Nowadays, the access to information is immediate, which helps to direct it to thousands of means of communication, not only releasing it in journalistic language but also providing all the information which is being published.

The Current Scenario Every year since its implementation, in 1995, IBGE is

among the three finalists of the best Brazilian governmental homepages, either in the public election or in the specialists´, and, in some years, it has conquered the first place award.

Publications – The quantity of pages and tables of all paper publications have been decreasing.

Publications have an enclosed CD-ROM presenting more tables than those in the printed volume.

We have created a public university library service network which receives our printed publications and CD-ROM and intend to expand it with the private universities service network.

The Current Scenario

Digital media products - A software to explore spatial data (Estatcart) was developed, and it has been well accepted by the users. A specific database has been generated for this software.

Training – We have developed courses called “Digital Tools Workshop”. In these courses, the principles for the use of the main Institution tools for data search have been passed on either to the Government, or the private sector.

Relationship with the Press In 2005, IBGE produced 169 releases distributed to

the press. IBGE has a mailing-list of 425 journalists of different

media in the country and overseas. The list is periodically updated and classified by editor.

From August to December 2005, IBGE had 1086 attendance press

The relationship with the press is made through:

Courses for journalists, where researchers explain surveys, their range and limitations for a more efficient work, and

There is a way to previously release to the press the structure of the survey results. The press has an agreement with IBGE to keep such information secret up to the publishing day, enabling to prepare more elaborated and reasonable subjects.

Releasing statistics under embargoed Since 2000, embargoed access to the annual and

special surveys has been given to accredited journalists

• it is essential to provide them with a period of time to assimilate and understand the data

• to provide for informed comment at the time of release. These releases take even entire blocks of the main television news, headlines and whole newspaper pages.

Embargoed access cannot apply to regular monthly and quarterly statistics releases

Releasing statistics – privileged early access According to the regulations of the Ministery of Planning

• Regular monthly and quarterly statistics are delivered 24 hours in advance to the Minister and at 7:30 to authorities identified that have privileged access (2 hours in advance)

The list of authorities is publicized at IBGE website

The authorities belonging to the list must observe the confidentiality of the information until IBGE releases the information

• Annual and special statistics are delivered 48 hours in advance to the Minister and released for press and internet at 10:00

Questions

What are the practices relating to release statistics

under embargo to the press?

and privileged early access to the government?

On going projects

To publish the results through “Cross Media” technology

Media center

Context Search

The whole site in English

Popularization of statistical information Today it is possible to access channels such as

Cidades@ and SIDRA through Google Earth, directing to a larger and more diversified public, information about the country and tools to manipulate such data.