15 May 2008 UNECE Statistical Division Slide 1

Open Discussion

Work Session on Statistical Dissemination and Communication

May 2008

Facilitator: Gina Pearson(U.S. Energy Information Administration)

15 May 2008 UNECE Statistical Division Slide 2

Discussion Questions

What are the major themes that emerged during the course of the conference?

What are the important outstanding questions or issues? Which topics especially warrant further discussion?

15 May 2008 UNECE Statistical Division Slide 3

Major Themes

How to successfully serve so many diverse (divergent) audiences / user groups.

• Developing & managing a customer feedback strategy / approach

Importance of customers and stakeholders – who are they and what are their needs?

Product development – related to user feedback Challenges of changing environment, both internal (eg

moving from having only a press secretary to a public relations office) and external (adapting product suite and web site to suit changing client groups and needs)

15 May 2008 UNECE Statistical Division Slide 4

Major Themes

Methods for preventing errors from leaving the office / proofreading and how to deal with them if they do

Quality assurance (like a future topic on this provided we don’t duplicate work in other groups)

Political independence and equal treatment of media

15 May 2008 UNECE Statistical Division Slide 5

Major Themes

Keeping up with the latest communications and technology tools, techniques, etc (RSS, Blogs, pod & video casting, wikis, etc).• Data visualization• Need to remember focus on communication not

technical aspects The need for standard structure(s) for data,

data integration, data commonality, etc. Metadata is a recurrent issue.

15 May 2008 UNECE Statistical Division Slide 6

Major Themes

Requests for and confidentiality of data Reconcile differences in data available at

regional and national level Education / statistical literacy Role of dissemination vs communication

– overlap and differences?

15 May 2008 UNECE Statistical Division Slide 7

Questions & Issues One of our stated goals is to ‘train’ statisticians

& subject specialists to design tables & write reports that tell interesting stories. Is there thought of working with meta-data writers to write for non-statistical audiences?

What are the key functional branches (teams) needed for the communications arm of a national statistical organization?

How can web governance be integrated with web content?

15 May 2008 UNECE Statistical Division Slide 8

Questions & Issues

How has the 24/7 news cycle provided challenges and opportunities for statistical communications organizations?

How much influence should stakeholders have concerning the inclusion of content questions and format?

15 May 2008 UNECE Statistical Division Slide 9

Questions & Issues

Should we create an international statistics ‘access license’ (standards involving identification of source, protection of original data, conditions for re-use and re-distribution)and, if so, how?

15 May 2008 UNECE Statistical Division Slide 10

Questions & Issues

ABS is looking at a system for licensing its data on the internet; legal issues and IT issues are being looked at. Are other agencies considering using watermarks etc for this. So any lessons? (Australia)

15 May 2008 UNECE Statistical Division Slide 11

Questions & Issues

Dissemination of sensitive group-specific results (SGSR) – from Heinrich Brungger:• Concerning the issue of release of small

aggregates, do you have special rules or a special policy for SGSR? If yes, what are they?

• What type of comments did you add to the last release of a SGSR?

• What was the reaction by media and users? Were some of these interpretations erroneous, and if yes did the NSO react publicly?

15 May 2008 UNECE Statistical Division Slide 12

Questions & Issues

To charge or not to charge • What are the price policies of other statistical

organizations and how does this differ depending on the category of user?

• Nat’l Statistical Service of Greece – charges only for tailor-made data & printed pubs, but special discounts for students & universities, free for public sector organizations

• Do organizations charge for metadata? How much?

15 May 2008 UNECE Statistical Division Slide 13

Questions & Issues

Pre-release of information• To pre-release or not to pre-release?• Pre-release to whom and why?• Market-moving information – the exception?• Need for guidelines?• Role of technology?

15 May 2008 UNECE Statistical Division Slide 14

Questions & Issues

Can we use the disscomm listserv to have discussions in between meetings? How can we achieve that?