1. UNECE Statistical Division Slide 115 May 2008 Open Discussion Work Session on Statistical Dissemination and Communication May 2008 Facilitator: Gina Pearson (U.S. Energy Information Administration)

2. UNECE Statistical Division Slide 215 May 2008 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?

3. UNECE Statistical Division Slide 315 May 2008 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)

4. UNECE Statistical Division Slide 415 May 2008 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

5. UNECE Statistical Division Slide 515 May 2008 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.

6. UNECE Statistical Division Slide 615 May 2008 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?

7. UNECE Statistical Division Slide 715 May 2008 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?

8. UNECE Statistical Division Slide 815 May 2008 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?

9. UNECE Statistical Division Slide 915 May 2008 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?

10. UNECE Statistical Division Slide 1015 May 2008 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)

11. UNECE Statistical Division Slide 1115 May 2008 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?

12. UNECE Statistical Division Slide 1215 May 2008 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?

13. UNECE Statistical Division Slide 1315 May 2008 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?

14. UNECE Statistical Division Slide 1415 May 2008 Questions & Issues  Can we use the disscomm listserv to have discussions in between meetings? How can we achieve that?