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"Quality requirements for web-sites – recommendations for best practice for fulfilling user needs”

Best practice in communicating statistics: Making statistics meaningful for users

Celia Santos SánchezUnit D4 – Disseminationcelia.santos-sanchez@ec.europa.eu

Thursday 8 September 2011 Committee for the Coordination of Statistical ActivitiesTask Team: Quality and Dissemination

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Quality requirements for web-sites

Principle 1: Have general guidelines for organisation

Principle 2: Provide rich set of content, free access to data with consistent tools across all domains

Principle 3: Make data reusable

Principle 4: Track usage, user behaviour, user feedback

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Principle 1

Important to have general guidelines for organisation

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1. Quality requirements: general EU guidelines Information Providers guide/The internet handbook

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1. Eurostat guidelines

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Principle 2

Provide

• rich set of content,

• free access to data

• with consistent tools across all domains

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2. Rich set of content

Statistical content

All section follows the “Content providers guide” to ensure harmonization and coherence between the sections

Multilingualism: EN, FR, DE

Writing for the web: big exercise to re-do all the introduction pages in web style

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2. Eurostat: rich set of content

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2. Eurostat: content: sections harmonised

All sections have the same look& feel

the user finds always the content structured in the same way…helping navigation

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2. Free access to data (free dissemination policy)

Started 1st October 2004

All statistical Data and electronic publications are FREE OF CHARGE via the Eurostat website

Available in three languages – (en,de,fr)

> 4.500 datasets online available

> 1.200 tables online available

> 6.000 publication available (.pdf)

Data updated twice a day

Among top 5 visited websites of European Commission

Thursday 8 September 2011 Committee for the Coordination of Statistical ActivitiesTask Team: Quality and Dissemination

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2. Consistent tools across all domains

Navigation tree

– Data Explorer (dataset interface)– Tables Graphs and Maps interface

Country profiles

Business Cycle Clock

Bulk download facility

Statistics Explained

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2. Consistent tools across all domains navigation tree

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2. Consistent tools across all domains: other visualisation tools

Thursday 8 September 2011 Committee for the Coordination of Statistical ActivitiesTask Team: Quality and Dissemination

• Business Cycle Clock (BCC) for economic cycle analysis

• Country and regional profiles for comparisons

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2. Consistent tools across all domains: Statistics Explained

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Principle 3

Make data reusable

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3. Making data re-usable

Users needs cannot be predetermined

Allow users to re-use data with tools they prefer

Provide various data formats in visualisation tools(xls, html, txt, xml, spss, pc-axis)

Bulk download facility – raw datasets(tsv, sdmx-ml, dft)

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3. Making data re-usable: Bulk download facility

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Principle 4

Thursday 8 September 2011 Committee for the Coordination of Statistical ActivitiesTask Team: Quality and Dissemination

Track

• usage

• user behaviour

• user feedback

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4. Track usage: monitoring figures – May 2011

4 million page views

886,000 dataset extractions

675,000 tables consultations

510,00 publication downloads (.pdf)

1,2 million datasets downloaded via bulkdownload

Internal Commission usage less 3%

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4. User behaviour: benchmarking 2010

Thursday 8 September 2011 Committee for the Coordination of Statistical ActivitiesTask Team: Quality and Dissemination

1. Comparison between Eurostat Website and other IO websites of similar nature

OECD website www.oecd.org IMF website – section “Data and Statistics” www.imf.org/external/data.htm UN website – section “Publication, Stamps, Databases” www.un.org/Pubs INE website www.INE.es

1. Analyse the quality of content

2. Produce recommendations

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4. User behaviour: benchmarking 2010

Thursday 8 September 2011 Committee for the Coordination of Statistical ActivitiesTask Team: Quality and Dissemination

• First impression It is clear who and what the site is for

• Overall impression7,8/10 Best rating

• Usability3,5/5 Best rating (vs 2,5/5 in 2007) but: “not always clear what to do next”, position in the website

• Functionalities Complete but should enhance search and result page Can enhance assess to data (appreciated service)

• Technical issues 2nd place – need to improve accessibility

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4. User feedback: support helpdesks

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Future developments

Inflation Dashboard (ECB)

Mobile Devices