Empowering Users with Intergovernmental Data: Breaking Barriers, Building Community

2. Outline of presentation • Intergovernmental data • Barriers to use of intergovernmental data • Tearing down barriers (Development of a new user community, part 1) • Making data digestible (Development of a new user community, part 2) • (User support) • Online demonstration • Conclusion

3. Intergovermental data • What do I mean by “intergovernmental data?” • Who provides the data? • What datasets do they provide? • Who uses the data?

5. Barriers to use • Lack of awareness of what is available • Prohibitive data licence and/or subscription costs • Multiple interfaces • Different service providers • Multiple registration systems • Absence of a co-ordinated data acquisition strategy • Size and complexity of some of the databanks • Absence of an integrated user support service • Lack of appropriate data handling/analysis skills

6. Establishment of ESDS International • Established in 2003 to remove all of the barriers to use • One part of a larger service called the Economic and Social Data Service (ESDS) • Government funding for 5 years initially; now funded until 2012

7. Tearing down barriers: Development of a new user community, part 1 • Data licence agreements • Single, web-based user interface: Web Data Server (Beyond 20/20 Inc.) • User registration system • Access management systems: Athens & Shibboleth • User training • Collaboration with data librarians

8. Negotiation of UK-wide data licence agreements with data providers Organisation for Economic Cooperation & Development (OECD) International Monetary Fund (IMF) United Nations Industrial Development Organization (Unido) World Bank UN Eurostat International Labour Organisation UK Office for National Statistics International Energy Agency

9. Data licence agreements cover these datasets: OECD Main Economic Indicators UNIDO Industrial Statistics UNIDO Industrial Demand Supply Balance IMF Balance of Payments Statistics IMF Direction of Trade Statistics IMF Government Finance Statistics IMF International Financial Statistics World Bank World Development Indicators World Bank Global Development Finance UN Common Database Eurostat New Cronos Database ILO Key Indicators of the Labour Market additional datasets from OECD IEA datasets

11. Making data digestible: Development of a new user community, part 2 • The main problem we wanted to solve: We needed to convert each dataset into a group of Beyond 20/20 files and publish the files on a web server • Each dataset consists of a unique set of files and, thus, requires a unique set of processing programs • What sort of files? Data files, code tables, footnote definitions, documentation files and metadata files.

12. Data file formats The data files come in different formats: • Beyond 20/20 format (IVT) • Comma separated values (CSV) • Tab separated values (TSV) • data stored in fixed-width columns • other: UN Common Database format & Microsoft Access

13. Data conversion procedure Data & user interface analysis Design a structure for the Beyond 20/20 files Write data processing programs to convert original data files into Beyond 20/20 format (“Builder” tool) Load footnotes (“Footnote Loader” tool) Publish Beyond 20/20 files and dataset documentation (“Publisher” tool)

14. Usage Statistics

15. User support • Web site: the focus of user support • Training courses • Helpdesk • User guides • Annual conference

16. ESDS International: Online Demonstration • Browse to: http://esds.ac.uk/international • Access data (e.g., World Bank data) • Online registration • Agree to special conditions (one time only) • Authentication (enter Athens username and password) • Beyond 20/20 user interface

17. Conclusion By providing free, web access to intergovernmental data via a single user interface it has been possible to create a new user community in the UK. ESDS InternationalHome page: http://esds.ac.uk/international