The Australian Bureau of Statistics is the first National Statistical Office in the world to make the entire census dataset available online in an interactive way. CDATA Online is an excellent example of early adoption of Government 2.0 – making data available to the citizens of the world in a useful way while protecting the individual privacy of respondents.
In 2006, the Australian Census counted 20 million people and 7 million households. A total of 116 household and personal questions were asked. A key output from the Census is to produce statistical products that encourage and support decision making, research and discussion within governments and the community. CDATA Online is one of a suite of products that were developed by the ABS to disseminate census data.
Before CDATA Online, Australian Census products consisted largely of static tables. Most other census organisations around the world are still producing hundreds, if not thousands or tens of thousands of census tables. While the static tables are fine for many users, users requiring customised data needed to buy a CD-ROM product or get an ABS consultant to do a customised data extract which they had to pay for.
The solution to this problem is a free online tool that combines data from the 2006 Census with web mapping and graphing capability. CDATA Online allows users to create custom tables of Census data, thematic maps and graphs, which can be based upon their own custom geographical areas.
CDATA Online is available via the ABS website and offers enormous value for anyone interested in creating and customising their own tables of Census data. It is a particularly powerful tool for researchers, students, academics and local governments, who will be able to create data tables based on their own geographical areas of interest.
Some of the key benefits of CDATA Online include:
- Free 24/7 access (via the web) to large amounts of Census data.
- The ability to customise data and geographical areas of interest.
- Access to online help and learning material to better utilise the product.
- It’s largely ‘self service’ – decreasing clients need to contact the ABS for a charged consultancy.
CDATA Online has been a major success for the ABS and its release has generated great interest from users and statistical agencies around the world. Since its release in October 2008, more than 14,500 people have registered to use CDATA Online. CDATA Online not only benefits users of Census data, it has been developed using modern technological solutions which are scalable and will be re-used for future statistical releases.
Development of the CDATA Online – Census Data Online initiative.
How and why the initiative was implemented.
A key objective of the Census is to encourage informed decision making, research and discussion within governments and the community by developing high quality, objective and responsive statistical products. Key goals underlying the development of CDATA Online were to:
- allow clients to satisfy their own data needs, free of charge.
- improve overall statistical literacy.
- maintain the confidentiality of individual responses.
In the past, confidentiality concerns limited the ABS’ ability to produce dynamic Census data products (such as CDATA Online). This was despite internal research that indicated a large proportion of our clients were keen to have this functionality. To facilitate the development of dynamic, client generated data tables, a confidentiality algorithm was developed that allows data to be confidentialised ‘on the fly’ (ie, as the table is built by the client), while maintaining table additivity and statistical accuracy. The introduction of this algorithm allowed, for the first time, the ABS to develop new and dynamic statistical products – such as CDATA Online.
Without the development of the confidentiality algorithm, CDATA Online would be a less powerful application with data needing to be pre-confidentialised before being put into the application. This would have resulted in lower quality results upon aggregation of areas and data items, and would have severely reduced both the relevance and use of the CDATA Online initiative.
Given the ‘self serving’ nature of CDATA Online, an important developmental requirement was to limit the ability of clients to construct tables that could be misinterpreted. CDATA Online is designed to allow users to construct their own tables of Census data using topic based databases, which are a sub-set of the entire Census results. By only allowing clients to create tables applicable to each database (ie. not allowing them to mix variables and data items from different databases) clients are less likely to create tables that may be misinterpreted.
CDATA Online was developed in consultation with Space Time Research and uses ESRI Australia mapping technology. CDATA Online uses Space-Time Research’s innovative SuperWeb product to quickly and easily create large tables of Census data. The strong and effective partnership forged between the ABS and these key stakeholders has been a key reason for the success of this exciting product.
The overwhelming popularity of CDATA Online resulted from extensive pre-release testing amongst users of Census data. Since its release in October 2008, more than 14,500 people have registered to use CDATA Online. Typical comments received by users include:
- “Thanks for developing such cutting edge technology. Incredibly productive. I can do in five minutes what would have taken a day or more the old way.”
- “Thanks for CDATA Online! It’s an incredibly powerful tool. I’ve used it to produce some fabulous cross-tabulations that I would never have been able to using previous versions of CDATA.”
- “Thank you, ABS. Pure awesome. And extra credit for making it multi-platform.”
Features of the CDATA Online – Census Data Online initiative.
Main features of the initiative.
CDATA Online allows clients to create their own tables of Census data on a range of different topics such as – age, education, housing, income, transport, religion, ethnicity, occupation and more. Tables can be customised to suit individual requirements and the resulting data can be exported in a variety of formats, and viewed as thematic maps or graphs.
All data obtained through CDATA Online is confidentialised dynamically as the tables are constructed, thus protecting our respondents’ privacy.
In CDATA Online clients are able to:
- Construct their own tables using 2006 Census data.
- Create custom geographies and data items.
- Compare data from different geographic areas.
- View data as totals or percentages.
- Save tables within the CDATA Online application for future use.
- Thematically map data.
- Customise map colours and landmarks.
- Graph data in seven different graph styles (column, bar, pie etc).
- Download maps and graphs in either PDF or PNG format.
What next
Since its launch CDATA Online has been upgraded to a new version of SuperSTAR (its underlying software) with improved speed, usability and additional features for users to further customise their Census tables.
The ABS is now preparing for the 2011 Census and is developing a pilot application to use an open statistical data standard (SDMX).
Further information:
- www.abs.gov.au/census
- www.spacetimeresearch.com/online-microdata-access-solution.html
- www.spacetimeresearch.com/delivering-online-microdata-access.html
URL
http://www.abs.gov.au/cdataonline
Established by
Australian Bureau of Statistics
In collaboration with
Space-Time Research
Started on
2005
Outcomes
CDATA Online has been a major success for the ABS and its release has generated great interest from users and statistical agencies around the world. Since its release in October 2008, more than 14,500 people have registered to use CDATA Online. CDATA Online not only benefits users of Census data, it has been developed using modern technological solutions which are scalable and will be re-used for future statistical releases.
CDATA Online received a Highly Commended in the Australian e-Government Awards in 2009, and won the ESRI Australia Web-GIS challenge.
Space-Time Research received a Highly Commended in the Australian Privacy Awards in 2009.
Addition details or information
CDATA Online is powered by SuperSTAR Software, provided by Space-Time Research.
SuperWEB is a java application and is the web-based client for the SuperSTAR platform for ad hoc tabulation and dissemination.
SuperWEB provides ad hoc multi-dimensional tabulation data in the form or tables, charts, graphs and maps. ESRI GIS or Google mapping output is available. SuperWEB also provides a unique Save as SDMX capability along with CSV, PDF and other output formats.
Performance
Extremely fast queries allow for self-service querying and generation of integrated cross tabulations, charts, and maps. Very large census data sets or complex surverys can be tabulated and analysed quickly and easily. SuperWEB includes "Duty of Care" capability to help users avoid data mistakes in creating analyses.
Categories
Topics: Geography, Society, and Technology.
Types: Gov 2.0.
Jurisdictions: Federal.
In August 2009 the ABS released a new subscription based on-line application named ‘TableBuilder’. TableBuilder is an online tool which allows you to create your own tables of Census data by accessing ALL variables contained in the Census Output Record File including age, education, housing, income, transport, religion, ethnicity, occupation, ...
... family composition and more for all ABS geographic areas. CDATA Online provides topic based data sets only which limits some cross-tabulations. TableBuilder is available as a subscription only data set (cost involved). Currently Census data is the only dataset available via TableBuilder. There are plans to make other ABS data sets available through TableBuilder in the future.
TableBuilder allows you to choose to count persons, families or dwellings, to select the variables to include in your table, and how to structure the data. For a complete list of the classifications available in TableBuilder, please see the 2006 TableBuilder Classification Index.
In TableBuilder you start with a blank table and are able to select Census data variables to cross-tabulate to produce small to large tables. Smaller tables may be viewed on-line and be presented as a graph or a thematic map within TableBuilder, or, be exported in a range of different file formats. Large tables (5,000,000 cells) can be constructed, previewed, and submitted for off-line processing; the results can then be downloaded directly to your computer for further interrogation without the need to view the data in your web browser.
As with CDATA Online, TableBuilder has been jointly developed by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) and Space-Time Research (STR).
For the 2011 Census, CData Online will be enhanced and brought up to the same (software) specification as TableBuilder. It has been re-branded as TableBuilder Basic; the original high-end TableBuilder has also been enhanced and re-positioned as ‘TableBuilder Pro’.
TableBuilder Basic will be free (topic based data sets); TableBuilder Pro will be a charged subscription service (full unit record fill and helpline support). Full descriptions and availability of TableBuilder Basic and TableBuilder Pro can be found on the ABS Website in: Information Paper: Census of Population and Housing — Proposed Products and Services, 2011 (Cat. No. 2011.0).