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

Introduction The outstanding development of Information Technology in the last years has strongly changed the way the National Statistical Agencies deal with their users. It did also generate many challenges that will be felt the near future.

Background Statistical dissemination in the IBGE was traditionally executed in two ways: (a) For the general public: by means of communication, release results or press conferences. (b) For the general users: through reference publications (Statistical Yearbooks, Compendiums etc.), and printed reports. When it comes to more specialized users and government agencies, the requirements are met through customized tables and microdata not identified in magnetic media, and these users ought to have computing centers.

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 Institutes call center.

Background The information dissemination used to end after the press communication and the publications were made available for reference.

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

The Current Scenario 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.

The Current Scenario Downloads: 14,169 in 1997 and 1,831,764 in 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 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 20 th 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

The first steps Our homepage users are: (a) Statistical information users, such as: researchers, consultants and managers who need statistical information for their activities, through publications, tables or microdata; (b) Users who will pass on the information: journalists, publishers, specialized publication authors; (c) Occasional users, that is, those who eventually search for information: students, professors or those who accidentally or because of curiosity accessed our site.

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 There is an effort to improve the communication with the public through the publications, inserting more texts and explanatory graphs for general understanding.

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