An innovative way to provideeasy access to UN System data

CCSA Conference on Data Quality for International Organizations

Stefan Schweinfest and Mary Jane Holupka, United Nations Statistics Division

UNdata and Quality (2)

Introduction

UNdata and accessibility Searching

Data presentation

Customization possibilities for users

Metadata

Addressing other quality dimensions: relevance, accuracy, comparability, timeliness

Challenges ahead

UNdata – Introduction (3)

60+ years of data collection Data stored in numerous databases: different web

interfaces; different access and dissemination policies

Driving force for UNdata’s development – reduce fragmentation;

“Statistics as a Public Good” Project – with Statistics Sweden, Gapminder Foundation, financial support from the Swedish Intl Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA)

Provide easier access, increase dissemination, use and understanding of int’l stats, free of charge

UNdata – Accessibility (4)

available free of charge, no need to subscribe or register; one interface from which all underlying datasets can be

searched and browsed; easily searchable by either using the search box or clicking on

a particular dataset name and browsing its contents; requires few clicks to get where one wants to go; presents data clearly, in simple tabular presentation formats,

which can then be customized and further refined by sorting, filtering, including/excluding columns and pivoting;

provides various download formats (xml or value separated for data received in relational database format, or excel tables if the original data were provided in that format);

Understandability/clarity links to or provides relevant accompanying metadata.

Bringing Information to the World

Quick facts

16 Databases

4 Table sets

55 Million records

192 Country profiles

6 Glossaries

UNdata partners

UNdata – Coverage (6)

UNdata – Search by country name (7)

Search by keyword; default data presentation (8)

Customized table after filtering, sorting and pivoting; download formats (9)

UNdata Wiki – Metadata and more (10)

UNdata – Administration tool to help assess relevance (11)

UNdata in the future (12)

More data, more partners More explanatory metadata More timely updates More search fine-tuning More visualization tools More languages More databases included, perhaps from

countries’ NSOs

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