Government agencies around the world collect unimaginable quantities of data on pretty much everything. And while I don’t doubt that teams of statisticians in those organizations make good use of that data, the firewall between that data and the public seems counter-intuitive for two reasons:

1. It’s rather logical that information gleamed from the public should be made available to that very public
2. Why limit your population of experts to those inside the organization, why not tap those within a country,
   or for that matter, across the globe?

Hans Rosling, founder of the GapMinder Foundation, and now employed by Google (who bought his TrendAnalyzer software in early 2007) is one of the biggest proponents of making data freely available to the public. We chatted a couple of weeks ago and he noted that government agencies were still struggling “to build the sidewalks that allow the public to access data stored within their organizations.”

One organization that seems to have heeded his advice, however, is the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA). Their statistics division (in partnership with GapMinder and the Government of Sweden) has opened up their database of over 60 years worth of statistics on everything from agricultural yields to internet users to patent applications.

In their press release, DESA notes, “Since its foundation, the United Nations system has been collecting statistical information from member states on a variety of topics. The information thus collected constitutes a considerable information asset of the organization. However, these statistical data are often stored in proprietary databases, each with unique dissemination and access policies. As a result, users are often unaware of the full array of statistical information that the UN system has in its data libraries. The current arrangement also means that users are required to move from one database to another to access different types of information”

UNdata breaks down the walls between these organizations by pooling data from various UN agencies (55 million records from 7 major agencies so far) and providing a pretty good search tool to navigate through it. This is a pretty impressive sidewalk! If only more agencies, including our own here in Canada, could do the same.